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Six years after attempting to take its flower store chain national, the Royer family is tentatively scouting for new markets to expand its Lebanon-based business.
The Royers own U.S. Retail Flowers Inc., known in Central Pennsylvania as Royer's Flowers & Gifts and Stephenson's Flowers & Gifts.
The family sold its chain for $7.8 million to Gerald Stevens Inc., a Florida-based investor group, in 1998. The Royers remained involved. But Gerald Stevens Inc., which turned Blockbuster Video into a national chain, could not do the same with flowers. Gerald Stevens filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2001, and it sold a majority of the business back to the Royers for about the same price.
The Royers are planning a more measured expansion. They are content to do it market by market. Within 10 years, they plan to open in three additional markets, most likely in the Mid-Atlantic region.
"We're not going to try to go to 50 states in a year," said Greg Royer, 45, president of U.S. Retail Flowers Inc. "It was too fast. That was really a part of the problem.
The company plans to break into a new market in two years sooner if the right deal comes along. Then, U.S. Retail Flowers would expand every other year. The company...