Nemuel DePaula has never been afraid of big pivots. The Brazil native immigrated to Boston at age 10, started his own graphic design business, Grita, while still in high school, and moved himself and the business across the country to Los Angeles in 2013. Four years later, DePaula took a gamble again with Lenita, the part-time mobile flower shop he launched and named after his mother.
DePaula, 35, has been captivated by flowers since childhood. “The first thing I ever stole was a rose,” he said with a laugh as he recalled the perfect bloom he snipped from his neighbor’s garden and slipped to his mom as a small child. Over the years, his aesthetic sensibilities evolved from purloined roses to less conventional species. His latest love is the “graffiti anthurium”, a tropical flower with a natural paint-splattered effect that resembles a bloodied orchid – but in a cool way.
For many years, DePaula operated under the assumption that his flower shop days would come much later in life. Instead, opportunity struck in the form of a used 1991 Dodge Aeromate truck he found on Craigslist. “In Los Angeles, food trucks are popular, and we’re blessed with the sun year-round,” DePaula said. “So I thought: why don’t I just take a stab at a weekend flower truck?”
DePaula bought the vehicle for $6,000. He gave it a fresh coat of shell-pink paint, and took it out around Los Angeles on select Saturdays and Sundays. In addition to flowers, he sold handmade gifts by local artists as well as his own line of greeting cards and cheerfully branded Lenita merchandise, such as truck-shaped enamel pins and mod flower stickers.
What began as a quirky side hustle eventually blossomed into DePaula’s full-time priority: a profitable business with a customer base of its own. The numbers are on his side: according to the market research firm Arizton, the US floral gifting market is predicted to grow from $12.25bn in 2022 to $18.9bn in 2028.
Although DePaula continues to take occasional graphic design commissions, Lenita became his central focus this past May. With the help of three silent partners – two of whom are his twin brother and their 37-year-old sister – he opened Lenita’s first brick-and-mortar retail space in Los Angeles’s hip Highland Park neighborhood. The cozy storefront, which used to house a nail salon, is nestled between a bar and grill and a pizza parlor in a retail strip located across the street from the legendary art deco Highland Theater movie house.