15 June 2006

Recent Longwood graduate is one of Richmond’s top corporate executives

William J. "Bill" Gouldin Jr., president and CEO of Strange’s Florists, Greenhouses & Garden Centers, with Dr. Wayne McWee, vice president of academic affairs at Longwood University

One of Longwood University’s recent graduates is the quintessential non-traditional student.

A B.S. in business administration was awarded in May to William J. “Bill” Gouldin Jr., who is 57, first entered college 40 years ago, earned roughly the same number of college credits at five universities (mostly in night school), and for more than three decades has run one of the most successful florist businesses in the country.

Gouldin is the president and CEO of Strange’s Florists, Greenhouses & Garden Centers, the  Richmond area’s most prominent florist and garden center. A member of the Corporate Advisory Board of Longwood’s College of Business & Economics since it was established in 1992, he decided to complete his degree after discussing it more than two years ago with Dr. Wayne McWee, vice president for academic affairs, who formerly taught in the business program. He took courses at Longwood during the 2005-06 academic year, and he previously took classes at Virginia Tech, the University of Oklahoma, Cameron University, and the University of  Richmond.

“I’ve always enjoyed taking college courses, not just for pursuing a degree but for getting fresh ideas I could put to use in business,” said Gouldin, who lives in the Rockville area of western Hanover County. “Even though I’ve completed my degree, I want to continue taking one or two courses at a time until I’m in the way. I’ve always had a curiosity about business.”

Gouldin, who grew up in the Highland Park section of Richmond and later Mechanicsville, enrolled at Virginia Tech in 1966 after graduating from Lee-Davis High School. “I wasn’t mature enough, when I was 17, to be a college student. After a year and a half or two years, my grades weren’t good enough to stay in school, so I joined the Army in 1968. I was an Army sergeant stationed at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma. I worked from 8 to 4:30 and had my nights free, so I picked up night courses at Cameron University, in Lawton, and the University of Oklahoma, whose professors drove from Norman to Lawton to teach at the Fort Sill artillery school.”

He got out of the Army on Aug. 15, 1971, a Friday, drove from Lawton to Richmond, and went to work at Strange’s Florists on Monday morning, Aug. 18. The business, then run by his father, had been launched in the early 1930s by Gideon A. Strange, a Richmond postal worker who began raising flowers and plants in his yard and sold them there and also in the 6th Street Market.

“Mr. Strange was first listed as a florist in the city directory in 1935,” Gouldin said. “He took spare parts from old greenhouses in Hollywood Cemetery that were being dismantled – they’d probably been built around the 1890s – and rebuilt them in his back yard and in the empty lot next to his house. He died in 1947 and his widow sold the business to my father, who was an engineer for the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, and his partner, Fred Kidd, also a railroad engineer. Both were part-time managers. My father continued to work for the railroad and bought out Mr. Kidd in 1960. I was the first full-time manager.”

Gouldin, the oldest of five children, grew up working in the business. “We were in the greenhouses as children. I was planting bulbs at 8, 9, 10 years old. The five of us worked in the summer, at holidays, and part-time while in school. The business was at one end of the block, at 3223 Dill Avenue, behind what had been Mr. Strange’s home, and our house was at the other end, 3201 Dill Avenue.”

The company’s ownership was transferred throughout the 1970s, primarily in the mid-70s, to Gouldin and his younger twin brothers, Cary and Craig, who joined the business a few years after him. Cary runs the greenhouse division (one of three divisions), and Craig is in charge of the main florist location. At its peak, in the spring, Strange’s employs a little more than 200 people.

Strange’s has been ranked by the Florist Transworld Delivery (FTD) as high, in 1991, as 9th in the United States, based on volume of outgoing FTD orders. “It fluctuates, but we’re usually somewhere in the top 25 to 40,” Gouldin said. “We’ve been in the top 100 since 1981.”

Strange’s corporate headquarters is between Short Pump Town Center and Route 288, in far western Henrico County at 12111 West Broad St. In 1979 the company bought a facility there that had been Paul’s (Markow) Flowers. Strange’s used it as a florist and greenhouse, then added a full-service garden center in 1981, began rebuilding it in 2003 and opened it as its headquarters, florist and garden center March 15, 2004. The brick, two-story, colonial-style facility has more than 110,000 square feet of indoor space, including a greenhouse range, and sits on 12.5 acres.

The company operates five florists, three of which are in Chesterfield County and are only florists. The largest retail florist, at 3313 Mechanicsville Turnpike in eastern Henrico County, was their headquarters from 1974 to 2004. “That’s the hub, which supports all of our florists with our supply and delivery center, and we have a garden center there,” Gouldin said. The wholesale greenhouse range, five minutes away, is where they grow plants for their retail locations and wholesale clients.

What does he enjoy most about the business? “The variety. There’s never a dull moment; there’s always something new to figure out. It always feeds my curiosity. I could never figure it all out. I think it was Confucius who said ‘Man is like a tomato. When he stops growing, he starts to rot.’ Plus, we have a product that most people like. It’s a good business to be in.”

He has been president of the Southern Retail Florists Association, chairman of Virginia FTD, and a member of the FTD Association board of trustees. He chaired the Retail Merchants Association of Greater Richmond from 1995-97 and the American Floral Endowment in 2003.

Gouldin’s wife, Brenda, has worked for Strange’s for about 20 years, first as accounting manager and more recently as personnel manager. They have two children: William J. “Will” Gouldin III, a 2004 Virginia Tech graduate who is an Army platoon leader in Iraq (he was promoted April 28 to first lieutenant) and plans to eventually replace his father in the business, and Margaret Ellen, or “Meg,” a rising senior at Patrick Henry High School, who wants to be a registered nurse.

 “My son broke the Bill Gouldin curse at Virginia Tech,” he said with a laugh. “My father and I attended Tech and didn’t graduate.”

Gouldin attended the University of Richmond’s evening school, called University College, at its downtown location (which has since closed) from January 1972 through December 1974. “I had to quit taking classes because we had just opened our headquarters at 3313 Mechanicsville Turnpike and the business consumed all of my time.”

He became involved with Longwood through his friendship with Dr. Berkwood Farmer, who he knew at UR when the latter, in addition to being associate dean of its night school, was his economics professor and course adviser. “When I met with him over breakfast at Aunt Sarah’s one day in 1990 to discuss an economics question that intrigued me, which was the relationship between GDP and population growth, he mentioned he was going to Longwood to be dean of the business school (a position he held from 1991-2001) and asked me to serve on a corporate advisory board that he was starting.”

Gouldin’s Longwood coursework was a combination of independent study, online and in-class work. In his business policy and strategy class, his team (he and four others), chose Strange’s for their case study of a business. For a one-credit internship, he worked as a consultant for Hull Springs Farm, a 637-acre farm on Virginia’s Northern Neck, given to Longwood in a 1999 bequest, which the university is exploring how best to use. He also took courses in theatre, history, American literature, computer science, business communications/public speaking and statistics.

His only sister, Jane Watkins, who is president and CEO of the Virginia Credit Union, was an Executive-in-Residence in Longwood’s College of Business & Economics in February.

Gouldin did not attend the commencement ceremony because it fell on the Saturday before Mother’s Day, the busiest day of his year. He returned to campus May 31 to pick up his degree, during which he met with Dr. McWee; Dr. Evelyn Hume, dean of the College of Business & Economics; and several of his former professors. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my involvement at Longwood,” he said. “I have gotten some fresh ideas and shared a few. It’s been a blast.”

Even with his degree, he continues to be a student. “This summer I’m reading two textbooks from different courses, which are Consumer Psychology and Consumer Behavior. Both books are titled Consumer Psychology, though they’re by different authors.”