If you’ve ever been far away from home, you know the feeling of longing you often feel for your friends and family. For many, home means somewhere you can’t go back to– a reality that is increasingly true for the over 36 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans living in the United States. What’s more, connecting with family who is far away is quickly becoming a large priority for the growing Latin American diaspora in the US.
The Mexican based startup AZAP is looking to serve this market of people yearning to connect with their family back home. AZAP is an e-commerce platform for sending beautifully designed flowers and gifts. Their focus is on surprising the user and bringing a touch of luxury to the flower purchasing process. The team is currently in various cities in Mexico, with plans to expand in other major Latin American cities in the coming years.
AZAP initially launched back in 2013 for Mother’s day, and since then, has grown to serve over 100 users a day. In this process, they’ve started to build a recognizable brand– these days, people frequently learn about their platform through word-of-mouth.
Lisa Milton, the founder of AZAP, sat down to tell me her journey. Milton’s story is unique in that she is not native to Mexico, where her company operates– she grew up and lived in the United States before she decided to move to another country, learn the language, and start a business.
She explains that she became passionate about Mexico after working in the non-profit sector in the US. She worked as a Community Organizer in East Palo Alto and East LA for over ten years, serving primarily Mexican immigrants. She focused her efforts on fighting for human rights and access to healthcare for immigrant children, and improving public schools.
One of the main things she witnessed at her job was the intense emotional connection that many people have with their families back in Mexico. This emotional connection was evident through the financial support many of them send to their family, but also by the incredible love and bond that people maintain for their country years after they have left.
After working in this sector, Milton decided to make a radical change in her life and chose to go to Wharton Business School. There, she decided she wanted to work on founding a startup, and in particular, wanted to start something in the sector of emerging markets.
“I figured that all of the experience I had working with Mexican American communities in the US would help me in starting something in Mexico. And as e-commerce was picking up in the US, I knew that it would be picking up in Mexico within a matter of a few years. So I started to look at what e-commerce company I could start in Mexico.”
Besides her non-profit work, Milton also has a huge passion for design. Initially, she considered starting something in the fashion industry but knew that she would need significant venture capital funding to make it possible.
“We hear all of these stories of people always needing venture capital funding, and I think many companies show that in certain cases, you can pick a niche or vertical where that is not necessary. I think there is something liberating about that.”
She looked at a list of the top e-commerce companies in the US and noticed that flower delivery ranked in the top 100, along with a couple of other gifting companies. She started to remember the emotional connection people she worked with feel towards Mexico and decided that it made sense to address the gifting market.
“I would essentially be serving as a bridge between the US and Mexico. I also knew that there was a hole in the Mexican market because there was really no affordable luxury gifting option. So flowers kind of fit my strange criteria, in that it incorporated that element of design, it addressed that emotional connection, and it didn’t require VC funding.”
AZAP uses an urban model, meaning that they deliver in the top 20 cities in Mexico. They serve both Mexicans living in Mexico and those in the diaspora alike that want to send gifts back home. In Guadalajara, over 50% of their clients are from the US– they use the service to connect with their family members.
“When I was verifying that this was a real need, I was talking to a woman from Mexico that was in the US, and I asked her, ‘what do you want to give back to your mom?’. Her reply was, “I would really love to give her a washing machine, and a hundred red roses.’ You could tell what those roses meant, the love they embodied."
When she got started, Milton decided to take her time in building her business. In the beginning, she was working on the side in order get the funding to get started. She focused on setting up a minimum viable product– on their first Mother’s Day, they set up a Shopify store and relayed orders to a local florist. With the extra money she had through her job, she hired two young, dedicated women in Mexico to help build the business.
“I really feel like not having venture capital funding allowed us to take our time to experiment and to create our look and designs. We took our time to evolve from a design perspective. Instead of pouring money into advertising to prove that we had traction, it allowed us to stay stealthy for a couple of years".
Some of the most interesting parts of Milton's story come from her approach in building her business. She explains that, initially, people told her she shouldn’t have another job if she was working on her startup. Many also said that she needed a CTO and that it wouldn’t work to have an outsourced development team.
“The fact is that if I hadn’t had another job, AZAP wouldn’t exist today. I think AZAP has broken the mold, particularly in Mexico– interestingly, people often still want us to fit into their preconceived notions as to how startups should be built. So I think it’s important to listen to all of the advice you are given, but sometimes you need to be a little deaf to the comments.”
Milton also explains some of the intricacies of starting a business in the gifting industry. In gifting, there is a significant difference in the number purchases your received on a typical day versus during the holidays. This past Mother’s day, for example, they had to scale up to deliver 1000% more than they do on an average day.
To manage this, Milton has spent a significant amount of time thinking about the backend of the site’s logistics and order processing system. The team uses Magento to manage all of the logistics around their deliveries, which has allowed them to scale quickly during the holiday seasons.
With this effort, Milton is hoping to continue growing AZAP and expanding across the region. Through their use of design, they are hoping to become the place where people in Latin America and the diaspora can purchase gifts for their families.
“The flower industry is interesting– I think that when I tell people what I do, they think it’s a very feminine thing. But I actually think it’s one of the hardest verticals. I have a perishable product that people want delivered at exactly the right time. The flower industry is also experiencing a big change– most of the major flower delivery services in the US, Mexico, and Brazil are run by men, who haven’t necessarily put all of their thought into the design. So I love seeing these new, disruptive models that are putting a lot of attention towards the emotional need of the client– it’s really exciting.”
