Alan "Buddy" Jacobson was awarded the 2010 Leland T. Kintzele (LTK) Distinguished Service Award during the Wholesale Florist & Florist Supplier Association (WF&FSA) Conference on November 4, 2010 in Miami, FL. Jacobson is the Chairman of the Board of Jacobson Floral Supply in Boston, MA.
The LTK award, the highest honor given by WF&FSA, annually recognizes a member who has made significant, long-term contributions to the floral industry and has displayed the qualities of integrity, fairness, perseverance and decisiveness during his or her career. Kintzele served as WF&FSA president from 1963 to 1966 and was the sales manager for Denver Wholesale Florist Co.
‘Keeping my customer happy' is Jacobson's focus and guided his remarkably successful career in the floral industry, which has spanned more than 55 years and provided many with employment and countless opportunities in the industry.
Jacobson was born on November 12, 1931 in Somerville, Massachusetts. He graduated from Boston English High School in 1949 and chose to study at Boston University. He majored in Business Administration were he earned a degree in marketing in the spring of 1953. Jacobson was drafted into the Army, completed his basic training and married Barbara two weeks later on a Sunday which just happened to fall on February 14th.
If Jacobson had any doubts about where his career would take him after the Army, his father did not. The day of Jacobson's discharge his father called him and announced he was expected at work in the family business the following Monday. The dye was cast.
His father started the business in 1943 selling ribbon out of the trunk of his '36 Chevy. He would drive from Boston to New York, buy large bolts of ribbon, then spend days traveling to flower shops throughout New England to sell the ribbon in smaller rolls.
When the ribbon inventory grew too large for the "warehouse," then located in Jacobson's childhood bedroom, his father opened the Father Jacobson Company in the heart of the Boston Flower Market on Tremont Street.
Jacobson dug right in developing the business, traveling to retail flower shops throughout New England and selling floral supplies. But that wasn't his sole focus. Blessed with a tireless, entrepreneurial spirit, he keenly watched the rapidly growing floral sales in supermarkets. It wasn't long before he landed his first supermarket account in 1959. More than fifty years later, he is still involved with servicing this customer. Thanks to Jacobson's vision, Jacobson is proud to count servicing supermarkets among its core competencies today.
Within a decade Jacobson moved the company to a then-state-of-the-art facility next to the Boston Flower Exchange, where he and a team of more than fifty employees, work today.
Jacobson's goal of total customer satisfaction was relentless. The floral supply industry was very barren back then. There were primarily warehouses that were difficult for customers to navigate. But Jacobson believed customers should be able to touch and feel the product. He wanted foot traffic within the store, which was not the norm.
This idea transformed Jacobson Floral into a walk-in facility and the first of its kind to introduce shopping carts-three to be exact. Soon customers were wheeling around perusing aisles with shopping carts stacked high with ribbons, glass, and silk flowers. Today, Jacobson Floral needs more than 100 carts for customers during promotions in the holiday selling season.
Constantly in tune with his patrons' needs, Jacobson set out to remedy their inability to find certain desired products, which, in some cases, didn't exist on the American market. In 1975, he made his first buying trip to Asia, where he sourced and returned home with unique, trend-forward products.
Success of others in the industry has always been vitally important to Jacobson. He always remembered the fact that his father was able to buy his first $500 worth of ribbon on credit; Jacobson wanted to mirror that grace and return the favor to his customers.
Knowing that smaller, local wholesalers didn't have his buying power, Jacobson invited his competitors to order from him the same, unique products that he could access. This practice continues to this day.
Jacobson Floral, now the largest hard goods-only wholesale supplier in the northeast and among the nation's largest, is a third-generation family business.
Jacobson's service to WF& FSA has been tireless. He served as a board member for seven years, including one year as president in 1999.
His involvement in the floral industry on both a national and local level includes support of the following: The American institute of Floral Designers, The Society of American Florists, Teleflora Sponsored Design Shows, Boston's annual "Say it with Flowers" event, which raises thousands of dollars for ALS research, Connecticut Floral Association, New England Floral Expo and the Massachusetts Flower Growers Association.
Source: Wholesale Florist & Florist Supplier Association