The Flamingo Estate business strategy began with a problem that had nothing to do with luxury: a farmer who needed to sell her vegetables.

The parking lot smelled like cardboard and cilantro. I was standing next to Aaron, my partner and the creative director of everything we make, and a farmer named Dani, who had tears in her eyes because the restaurants that bought her vegetables had closed in a single week. We had borrowed a hand truck from the bookstore. We had a stack of flat-packed boxes printed with a flamingo. We thought we might sell twenty-five. [reconstructed]

We sold a hundred. The next week, three hundred. We hired drivers. We filled a warehouse. One farm became ten, then a hundred and fifty CNBC, Aug. 6, 2025. I had spent two decades building campaigns for Hermès and Cartier, and I had never seen a number move like that. Not because we were clever. Because people needed vegetables, and we had a way to get them there. [reconstructed]

That was March 2020. I did not know then that the boxes would become a candle company, and the candle company would become a garden that sells luxury.

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