THE REGION : SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ENTERPRISE : Brother, Sister Put the Petal to the Metal : Services: Marty and Helen Shih built a tiny flower stand into a $41-million telemarketing company.

Marty and Helen Shih tell one of those entrepreneurial success stories that boggle the mind.

From meager beginnings selling flowers on the street in Downtown Los Angeles 16 years ago, the brother-and-sister team built a chain of flower stores that specializes in mass-produced flower arrangements.

And from a database compiled through thousands of flower purchases, the Shihs built a telemarketing company specializing in recent Asian immigrants. The first day’s take in March, 1979, was $1.99. Last year, they bought and sold $41 million worth of goods and services.

These two are a walking advertisement for thinking big and working hard. They also demonstrate the exploding business of ethnic telemarketing as corporations search for new ways to reach fresh consumers.

“From flower shops to a telecommunications company--it doesn’t look like it is related, but it is,” said Marty Shih (pronounced she ), who arrived in the United States from Taiwan only weeks before going into business. “No matter how big the business, I say it’s about the dream and the people. . . . You sell your concept and become part of everybody’s dream.”

Even the Shihs, both in their early 40s, look back with a bit of amazement. They recall almost fondly how their second morning in business began with the discovery that $200 worth of merchandise had turned to flower-sicles in the cooler overnight, and how they bickered their way to a prosperity they little imagined when they sunk Marty’s $500 college tuition into a small flower stand in a building lobby on Olive Street.

“When I started selling flowers on the street, I said, ‘Marty, you’re going to become the McDonald’s of the flower industry,’ ” Marty Shih said. “Well, we haven’t become McDonald’s, but maybe we’re Burger King or Wendy’s.”

Helen and Marty grew their chain, called She’s Flowers, to 16 stores. To control costs in an increasingly competitive industry, they began producing flower arrangements on an assembly line. Sales blossomed to nearly $5 million in 1989, the year Marty decided to try something new.

With three employees, Marty took the computerized information gleaned from each flower purchase and created a company to sell products and services to recent Asian immigrants, a fast-growing market.

“It started as a very simple concept. The whole society is changing to an information society” and the Shihs had a wealth of the stuff, he said. First, they worked on a telephone sales network for flowers and gifts. Then it expanded.

Now the company, called Asian Business Connection, has developed so many offshoots that Helen and Marty debate softly for a moment before sketching out a rough organizational chart. The 350-employee operation, with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, include:

* A buying club for businesses that negotiates discounts for member companies on such things as MCI long-distance calls, DHL overnight delivery services, airline tickets, hotel rates, car rental prices and insurance.

* A consumer telemarketing operation in partnership with Sprint that resells a variety of products and services using seven Asian languages.

* A financial division that locates the highest CD rates at a network of 2,200 banks, represents several insurance companies and offers membership to a health maintenance organization tailored to Asian clients.

* A business equipment division.

* The She’s Flower chain, which has shrunk to seven stores. But the corporation runs a network of 9,000 flower shops and 4,000 gift shops around the nation, Helen Shih said.

* An Asian calling directory, nicknamed “Asian 411,” that lists more than 30,000 Asian-American businesses. The service is free to callers and to the businesses listed.

* A real estate division whose main asset is a five-story office building just yards from the Santa Bernardino Freeway in El Monte that the Shihs plan to turn into an Asian business center, complete with a 9,000-square-foot ballroom for community functions.

The business is centered on a toll-free line, (800) 777-CLUB, and the slogan: “Anytime, anywhere, anything.” A single call to that number--generally from an Asian who came to this country less than 10 years ago--brings up a menu of goods and services available.

“We have critical mass. We can ask a lot of discounts for our members,” Marty Shih said. “We repackage and not only break through the language barrier, but the cultural barrier, which is even more important.”

The calling directory alone receives 1,000 calls a day and also functions from time to time as an emergency line.

The Shihs said a woman from San Francisco called last month in a panic because she had lost her child and didn’t know what to do. The operator kept her on the line, contacted the San Francisco police, and translated for the frantic mother. The child was quickly found.

Along the way, the Shihs have made financial partners of many of their employees and have given top managers a free hand in running their divisions.

“It’s Marty and Helen’s dream to help the Asian community and make some money at the same time,” said Bob Johnson, a long-time flower industry executive that the Shihs hired last year to become chief executive of Asian Business Connection and to help bring a professional structure to the fast-growing company. (Marty remains chairman and is focusing on idea-spinning and international growth. Helen is a board member and runs the financial division.)

“Many companies don’t know how to market to the Asian community,” Johnson said. “We offer the companies the opportunity to get at the market and offer the community the opportunity to get true value.”

Long-distance phone carrier Sprint was so pleased with its relationship, that it invested in the company recently.

“We just started being very impressed with their intuitive understanding of the Asian community,” said Jim Dodd, a Kansas City-based Sprint assistant vice president. Among other things, Asian Business Connection showed Sprint that all Asian groups are not the same so that marketing to price-conscious Chinese is different from marketing to prestige-conscious Japanese.

“Marty has helped us immerse ourselves in and understand the cultures,” Dodd said. “When he says he’s going to do something, we know that he will make it happen.”

The Shihs were able to grow with very little bank capital. They say they have achieved their success by working long hours to implement Marty’s vision.

“My career is all built on the dream and the passion, and I want it to stay that way,” Marty said.

They continually praise the United States as a land of opportunity that they want to share with other Asian immigrants. Their next venture will be to launch a club for Asians modeled after the American Assn. of Retired Persons, the Shihs said. It would help ease new immigrants into the U.S. culture and would create new marketing opportunities for the company.

“Even though this is the greatest country, there are a lot of barriers,” Marty Shih said. “The immigrant is like a newborn baby.”