In 2018, having spent her career in floral design, Amy Dunlap was ready for a change. She began considering a move into flower farming but quickly realized there was no effective way to sell bulk flowers regionally. As a wholesale buyer, she had rarely purchased local products, instead spending most of her budget on imports—an experience that’s common across the industry.
“I paused and thought, ‘instead of adding to the flower supply chain regionally, I think it needs to be fixed’,” Dunlap said.
This thinking led to the formation of STEMZ, a Winston-Salem-based startup Dunlap co-founded with Claire Parrish with a vision of transforming the wholesale flower industry. The idea was to connect regional growers and buyers through a custom-built, tech-enabled platform, helping florists reserve 100% regionally grown flowers in advance while farmers efficiently match harvests with demand.
Dunlap joined NC IDEA Labs, where she began shaping what the company could become. In 2019, STEMZ launched a beta test with a small group of farms and wholesale buyers, with Dunlap using Google Sheets and her family car to track and transport flowers.
Today, the startup works with more than 30 farms—mostly in North Carolina with a few in Virginia and South Carolina—and has over 50 on the waitlist. Many of these farms focus on specialty flowers, or flowers that do not do well on import (such as Dahlias).
Flagship tech features
Functionally, STEMZ is a tech-enabled matching and e-commerce system that also handles the logistics of connecting the flowers from farmer to buyer.
“The logistics are really important, but the tech is the engine of the company, for sure”, Dunlap said.
Over years of hard work and innovation, STEMZ has built its own buying and selling platform with a few flagship features.
One is the Priority Advance Order system, which allows floral buyers to reserve regionally grown flowers weeks in advance. Buyers typically place orders about a month ahead of need, and those orders are posted to a shared claim page where participating farms can see them and commit to fulfilling part or all of the request based on their upcoming crop plans. This approach benefits both sides: florists get early access to the flowers they need, while farmers secure guaranteed sales before harvest.
“We have to work really closely with the farms and understand their crop plans to be able to put that inventory available for buyers to order in advance,” Dunlap said.
The other main feature is Live Field Inventory. Live Field Inventory reflects what farms currently have available in their fields and ready for near-term harvest. Farmers list real-time inventory through the STEMZ platform, enabling buyers to browse and purchase flowers for delivery the following week. This system is particularly valuable for smaller farms and seasonal growers, providing an efficient outlet for surplus, experimental crops, or unexpected production successes.
Adding value in unique ways
Beyond simplifying ordering and logistics, STEMZ adds value through comprehensive data collection and analysis. For farmers, the platform tracks sales trends, crop performance, and seasonal demand, providing actionable insights to guide planting and production decisions. Quarterly seasonality guides highlight top-selling varieties and identify gaps in the market, helping farms align their crops with buyer needs and increase profitability.
“We love collecting data and reviewing it and trying to really encourage the farms to grow what the designers are really asking for,” Dunlap said.
For floral buyers, meanwhile, the startup’s approach makes it easier to plan designs and proposals. Buyers can see what flowers will be available throughout the season, and when they put in the date of the event, they can show their clients what will be available regionally at that time, based on the previous seasonal data.
NC success and future plans
STEMZ has already enjoyed notable success in the North Carolina startup ecosystem. Last fall, they were awarded the NC IDEA Rural Impact Grant for their work empowering rural NC farmers with profitable and local sales channels.
“That really got us looking at what counties we are working with, and the ways we are helping to preserve farmland and allow farmers to hire more staff, build infrastructure,” Dunlap said, “That impact, knowing we are supporting agriculture in our state, gives us the juice that keeps us going.”
QUICK BITS
Startup: STEMZ
Founder: Amy Dunlap
Founded: 2020
Team size: 8 (4 full-time)
Location: Winston-Salem
Website: findstemz.com
Funding: Pre-seed (closed Q4 2023)
In the near term, STEMZ is focused on upgrading its platform. This means integrating farmer crop plans, implementing substitution logic, and adding barcoding to streamline inventory and logistics, making the system more automated and seamless.
Looking further ahead, the company plans to expand along the East Coast with additional regional hubs, each replicating the central warehouse model to efficiently connect growers with buyers and bring fresh, locally grown flowers to new markets.
