Jeremy Friedman used to compete with Welby Gardens.
Now, he owns some of the company’s land and employs its former owner and CEO.
“I’m just excited to have this opportunity that most business folks would love, when your competitor closes its door and leaves the market share to be had,” said the owner of Arvada-based Blooma Farms.
His wholesale grow operation, which primarily sells flowers and vegetables to independent garden centers, is growing into 5 acres of greenhouses at 6710 Washington St. formerly owned by Welby Gardens. Friedman estimated that the legacy plant purveyor was three to four times the size of Blooma when it shut down over the summer. Welby also operated on 20 acres in west Arvada.
Blooma, founded in 1981 as Brown’s Greenhouses and acquired by Friedman in 2010, purchased the Adams County property for $4.5 million, public records show. The last time it traded hands was in 1998, when Welby bought the parcel for $740,000.
“We’re saving the greenhouses, saving some good employees and stepping up our game to be better able to serve our local community,” Friedman said.
The most notable staffer coming on is Al Gerace, the former owner and CEO of Welby and the middle child of Alex and Esther Gerace, the married couple who founded the company in 1948. He will lead Blooma’s sales team after decades growing the family business.
“He’s a VIP, a hall of famer in our industry,” Friedman said.
In his new job, Gerace said he’ll focus on growing Blooma’s landscaping side. When Welby closed, he said, landscapers accounted for 60% of its business. That figure is 15% for Blooma, according to Friedman.
“I didn’t want to leave them in the lurch,” Gerace said of his former customers. “Welby was a pretty important part of the industry, so we want to continue to get them placed with the quality product Blooma has.”
Blooma wasn’t necessarily looking to acquire more property, but when Welby announced it was closing, Friedman jumped at the opportunity to expand. If he hadn’t bought the Adams County site, which is in an industrial area, he figures it would’ve likely been redeveloped, much like Welby’s main 20-acre property near West Woods Golf Club in Arvada. That will become an AvalonBay Communities apartment complex, city records show.
AvalonBay is under contract to buy the land, and the payout will amount to what Welby could’ve made over the next 20 years, Gerace said. He said he wasn’t necessarily looking to sell or close Welby, but the money made the decision easy for the aging family.
“In 77 years we were very successful, but there was a time when things became too valuable,” Gerace said.
The Adams County site, with its 120,000 square feet of greenhouses, will join Blooma’s 8 acres and 250,000 square feet of greenhouses across two properties in Arvada. Friedman said the move will enable its majority independent garden center customers to order more perennials, annuals and vegetables.
He said Blooma has around 350 customers and said he thinks landscaping revenue can become up to 30% of Blooma’s business, in part because Welby served a large percentage of them.
Blooma also has two other companies under its umbrella: Rocky Mountain Liners and Plum Creek Garden Market. The former is a young plant company, which propagates seedlings and ships them off to be planted worldwide. The latter is a retail outfit that runs four pop-ups in the metro area from spring through mid-summer. Another in Greenwood Village wrapped up its season last week, he said.
Friedman estimates that his young plant business is now the second biggest in the Centennial State with the closing of Welby, which had a similar outfit called Hardystarts. He said Blooma’s wholesale side is the third or fourth largest in the state.
He didn’t give specific revenue figures but said the business exploded during COVID and is about 10 times the size it was when he bought it. The full-time employee count has gone from 10 to 40 during that time, and seasonal workers are up from about 20 to 150.
“Going into COVID, it was a big unknown for all of us. But certainly on the upside of COVID, we couldn’t have enough plants,” he said. “It was a game changer for the industry I fell into, and it’s great because it’s getting people away from their TVs and getting outside.”
He sees Plum Creek as a growing part of the puzzle also. That’s because the independent garden center industry is shrinking as big-box stores such as Home Depot continue to increase their foothold on the market.
“Denver has and still may be one of the best IGC markets in the country, but regardless there’s a lot less,” Friedman said. “There’s a lack of succession (generation-to-generation), and then owners go to sell and the land value exceeds what they could get for the business.”
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