At a time when 1 in 8 businesses lose over US$10 million (AU$15 million) per month due to digital outages, and more than half report losses exceeding US$1 million from connectivity or performance failures, the ability to bounce back from digital disruption and be digitally resilient is no longer an option; it’s an essential skill.

James Stevens, Founder and CEO of Roses Only and, more recently, Mr Roses Australia, has spent most of his life in the floristry business. From helping his father buy blooms at Sydney markets as a boy to launching one of Australia’s most recognisable online florists, selling it, and then re-entering with a refreshed brand, Mr Stevens knows a thing or two about what it takes to build digital resilience into a business model.

“All businesses now, by default, are digital businesses,” he recently told UNSW Business School’s Associate Professor Yenni Tim from the School of Information Systems and Technology Management. In an interview, Mr Stevens shared his top advice for those looking to start their ventures or leadership positions in the future.

From family floristry to founding Roses Only

From an early age, Mr Stevens was involved in the flower business. His parents immigrated from Greece in the 1950s and built a life in Sydney, running a small flower shop at Town Hall station, which sparked his lifelong passion for floristry. While helping his family in the shop, Mr Stevens studied a Bachelor of Commerce at UNSW Sydney, majoring in accounting and finance. “I had no excuse. I had to actually go and help in the family business, which I was more than happy to do, and I always enjoyed helping our family with what put food on the table,” he said.

In 1995, he founded Roses Only, bringing his father into the business with him, and leveraging their existing floristry infrastructure. From there, he grew the brand in Australia, Singapore, the UK, Hong Kong, the US, and Jakarta. Roses Only became synonymous with premium, long-stemmed roses and high-profile gifting for special occasions like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

In 2013, he sold Roses Only’s Australian and New Zealand operations to FlowersCorp, while retaining rights for overseas markets. After six years out of the Australian market, Mr Stevens said he felt the pull back and in 2019 launched Mr Roses, his eponymous luxury rose-delivery brand targeting the Australian market. The company sources its flowers from Ecuador, Colombia, and Kenya year-round. In Mr Rose's first February in 2020, the business made $203,000 over Valentine’s Day alone. By 2022, that grew to more than $800,000, and the business recorded $5.4 million in revenue.

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Mr Stevens explains that relaunching into the market wasn’t only about selling flowers, but about building a business with purpose. “I felt that there was an opportunity for me to come back, and we’re a very community-conscious sort of business,” he says. “I knew that my business could help others beyond the business. And so I feel we’re a charitable business. There was a purpose beyond selling flowers.”

Navigating digital disruption

After selling the Australian operations, he retained control of overseas rights, a strategic move that allowed him to re-enter the domestic market later through Mr Roses while benefiting from global brand exposure.

In developing the business model for Mr Roses, Mr Stevens has leaned heavily into experimentation and iteration, something he suggests is key to navigating digital disruption. “There’s lots of constant testing and looking at data,” he said. “The reliance on more and more data, testing and then adapting to that… if you don’t change, you’ll very quickly fail. If you change, recalibrate and retest constantly, I think you’ve got more of a chance of surviving.”

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is now central to that effort. “I can’t see any part of anything we do in marketing in particular that won’t be touched by AI,” he explained. “Whether it’s looking at our conversion data, whether it’s conversion optimisation, our usability of our website, even testing our database constantly.

“Different types of EDMs or newsletters that we put out to our database and then breaking it up in piecemeal pieces, be it geo-located, because perhaps the data in Brisbane varies from the data in Sydney and Melbourne and possibly the United Kingdom, Singapore and the US.”

This e-commerce focus extends to checkout: “We don’t sit there waiting for months on end after a particular data set is seen. You could sit there, and if you don’t change, you’ll fail quickly.”

When discussing the impact of AI on his business, Mr Stevens is optimistic but pragmatic. “At the end of the day, we sell flowers, and our job is to deliver quality flowers on time. That ultimately underpins what we do… Nothing has changed. This is just another tool that’s come in, and we’ve just got to adapt as quickly as possible to this… opportunity.”

He likens the current adoption of AI across sectors to earlier waves of digital disruption with the internet. “This will be something that, from what I can see, it's no different to the first few years of dot com. It'll be a steep learning curve, steep adjustments, I suppose," he said. 

“Even little things like customer service and chat; I'm not talking about ChatGPT, I'm talking about our chat and how we use those platforms. There are opportunities that I see. I see we're getting more sales care of chat, where we're informing customers a lot quicker who were possibly concerned about their delivery and so on.”

As the business has grown, Mr Stevens said he is focused on leadership, fostering a strong culture, and safeguarding the brand’s reputation. “Philosophically, as far as I’m concerned, culture is everything, but it has to be a culture built on trust and respect. I don’t stand for arrogance, and everybody in the organisation is important, whether you’re the cleaner, the person preparing the roses, the designer, the delivery driver, the marketer, customer service, or the search engine experts,” he said.

“To me, that’s what a brand stands for. A brand is something you trust and respect. And if anything harms the brand, that’s probably what bothers me the most. I won’t allow the brand’s reputation to be harmed in any way. Everybody has to be conducting the actual orchestra. And it’s all got to come together. That is really the role of a leader – to actually make sure that it all sounds perfect in the end.”

Advice for graduates and aspiring founders

For recent graduates or early-stage entrepreneurs looking to launch a small business or startup, Mr Stevens advised them to immerse themselves in all parts of a business: “Get involved. Start at the very bottom. Be the type of person who volunteers constantly for extra work, and involve yourself with all stakeholders, from suppliers and financiers to investors and customers. It’s so important to know all aspects of business and how they interrelate.”

He also encouraged budding entrepreneurs to view mistakes as valuable lessons and to keep taking calculated risks. “My advice would be to get in there, work hard, try things, particularly in your 20s. I don’t think it’s failure if you fail – I think it’s learning, and it’s learning for that next phase, beyond your 20s, hopefully for the ensuing 20 to 30 years," he said.

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“I still think that they need to try, try things and recalibrate. I don’t think you should leave it to AI to set up your business, or to give you all the answers… Perhaps the ones that venture out and try things that are a little bit different may be noticed a bit more.”

Finally, he said the people who ultimately succeed are those who pick themselves up after failure and try again. “The people that succeed are the ones that haven’t given up when they fail – you’ve got to pick yourself up and go again.”