Thank you! & Uh-Oh....Christmas

Some of you may know that all of us involved in the shop have outside jobs.  Each of us has a full-time job that we try and manage as well as the shop.  We have Hubert there to manage the day-to-day activities but the "business" aspects are run by us in our "free"time.

The shop was my big idea.  So I gather everyones support for the idea, we come up with a name and money and I get myself assigned to a huge project in Brazil and leave town....7 times.  That pretty much sums it up.  I'm on my 7th trip in 4 months and have been gone for over a week this time.  It sounds like madness there and I cant even help.

This post is both a HUGE thank you to my partners (specifically John) as they have been doing way more than their fair share while I have been out of town.  Up to this point we have been sharing the delivery responsibilities during the day and in the afternoons and then the weekends we are all there hanging out and trying to learn.

This past week or so has been hell there.  Orders are increasing, the phones are messed up, and I havent even been able to call home, let alone support anyone on any finance or system related issues (I do the books and manage the website.)  All of this is good but we are really feeling the pressure now.

Christmas is here and I know we have no idea what were in for.  I know that we are still churning out quality work (our designer is the BEST) and we continue to spend as many free minutes with Hubert to learn technique and design.  We are improving and Reese even made her first bouquet too! (See photo above but please dont look to closely as John spelled her name wrong on the price tag! LOL)

I will be back in the US tomorrow morning so I'll be back to the foral madness and there to give my partners a well deserved break.  Thank you John, Sid & Catherine (Reese & Shelby too) for helping to make this business a success!!!!

Power to the flower!

Nicole

Open House

We held our first Open House last weekend and it was fantastic!



There was an event being held on the Square in Carrollton (Christmas on the Square) which is a big kid driven event. We set up a booth/table on the square and in preparation I bought a bunch of inexpensive toy/novelty items hoping that the kids would drive the parents to us.



All in all we had great traffic, John's sister manned the booth for most of the day and the rest of us rotated in and out of the shop. We had a drawing for several items that people had to go to our shop to sign up for. So essentially we baited the kids with toys, bribed the parents with the free drawing and got lots of people into our shop.



Of the traffic we had we had a remarkable amount of people make comments like "when did you open?" "I never knew there was a flower shop here!", "You have some really cute things" and so on. Of the comments, the most shocking is the "When did you guys open up?".... the shop has been here in this building for 10 years and across the street for 4 before that! It was unbelieveable!



We knew the shop needed a sign (which it didnt have when we bought it) so this was great validation that it was money well spent... OBVIOUSLY.



We made a few dollars (as much as you can selling $1 items to kids) but the feedback and the traffic was well worth all of our effort AND the GIANT fight that John and I got into on Friday night. (Sorry to air the dirty laundry dear but this is a blog and remember how cute I am so you can forgive me.)



We had reached our personal limits over the past few weeks, with the pressure reaching epic proportions on Friday night. Each of us involved with the shop have worked our butts off doing prep work and marketing, etc. to the point of exhaustion. In the end we hope it really paid off.



The highlight of the day was when we were approached by a photographer for the local section of the Dallas Morning News (Neigbors Go) to take a photo of our booth and all of us in it. Keep your fingers crossed, if it gets published this Friday it could mean great publicity for our shop!!!



Thats all for now...



Power to the Flower



Nicole

Since I was a little girl....

I mention in our About Us page about my always wanting to have a flower shop since I was younger.

Interestingly enough my parents just shipped me some old photos this week. Going through the boxes I found these old pictures of me...










At first glance I thought how telling this was about my desire to be a florist. However, after some thinking (and some Chardonnay) I thought there might be other reasons for me to be picking dandelions. Maybe I have missed my calling completely and I should have been a landscaper? Perhaps a chemist who develops the weed stuff you put on your lawn even!



We can all acknowledge, based on my outfit, that I wasnt destined for fashion design (Who wears red and white striped hats with a yellow sweater? I'm not even going to mention the socks.).



Then.... I stumbled upon this photo.





So it is clear to me that in some ways I havent missed my calling too much. I do love flowers but even more I LOVE to eat. While I have never eaten a dandelion head (unless you count accidentally inhaling those white seed things that you blow when they turn all puffy), I have enjoyed many a dandelion salad with vinagarette dressing. If that dandelion head was covered in carmel and nuts .. forget it! It would be a completely different picture and they probably wouldnt have had the time to snap the pic before I was standing there with an empty stem, smiling.

At any rate, I thought these were cute and funny and had to share them with you all.

Power to the Flower,

Nicole

Before & After Photos

Here they are... the Before (Andre's Florist), pink walls, green and white striped wallpaper, white and pink and green shelving, etc., etc., etc.

And the almost After (Blooms on the Square).


Tan walls, reddish wall, far lest dust, dirt and grime. We've pushed back the counter to allow for more retail space, and at this point had begun to decorate for Christmas.

Were working every spare minute to update, refresh, prune and weed out the old stuff.

We have our first open house this weekend so were looking forward to the feedback!




Hope you enjoy!

Nicole

Marketing the Shop

Need I say more?


And by the way .. it worked. We got some foot traffic :)


Flower On!


Nicole

Easter Suprise

Today we pulled down a few boxes just for fun and this is what we uncovered. Much of it is now in the dumpster in the back of the shop. Those poor waste management guys.

Hide the children! Its the ............Easter Bunny?

Here he is clowning around with Sid...that Easter Bunny, hes such a kook!

Doesnt he know that this is no time for fooling around? Sid is trying to check his electric bill balance. Things are tight right now since going in partners in a flower shop...

If things werent spooky enough... the Easter creatures even tried to scare my own child.... (That's my daughter Reese in the background, I think she making a slashing motion at the evil wooden egg bunny.)


We were open yesterday and today doing our normal thing..picking through, cleaning and straightening. We had a huge day yesterday and racked up $1.08 in sales. (See mention of Sid checking his electric bill above). Considering we gave the little girl that bought a Christmas ornament a flower, that puts us at a wash for the day.

On the bright side, today we got three sizeable orders and things are looking brighter for tomorrow. So we push on.

My First Dozen Roses

So the time has come to put myself out there and make a dozen roses. John and I were at the shop last weekend and it was go time.

I had an hour or so to myself and dove right in. Approximately 45 minutes later my masterpiece was complete. That's right....45 minutes. I'm no accredited florist but I have to tell you that I at least know that this was downright pathetic and if I ever want to see a penny of profits I need to work on my efficiency.

I made at least three different cuts to the stems (each) afraid to cut too short the first time, then again the second until it was juuuuuuuuuuuuust right. Then it came to the arranging.. at the end it was satisfying to look at what I created but why did I feel so anxiety ridden? I felt like the creative process became some sort of mental test. What will Hubert think, did I cut them too short? Did they look balanced? Were there enough greens? Is he going to laugh me into oblivion? Or worse than that...were they "Fast-Crap"? (This is Huberts phrase for "florists" who get their design certificate piece of paper at the community college and churn out careless work.)

My floranxiety is driven by the fact that creativity is something that I have but I have to work at it. It does not come naturally and unfortunately I know that so I tend to over think, overanalyze and generally drive myself into a florenzy.

In the end I got an atta-girl from Hubert which made me feel incredible. He only had to touch up the greens slightly before it could actually leave the shop. Not bad for a fledgling! ;)

By the way, I haven't posted a pic of my masterpiece because due to unfortunate circumstances, I have lost my camera. This is something that we will delve into in future posts when we explore my terrible ADHD and scatterbrained traits.

13 Years Worth of Dirt/Fur

Floral things first...we are continuously working on tweaking our Teleflora Web Page. Be sure to check it out as we have a new "About Us" page. Shop picutres should be forthcoming.

Now for the dirt....

So we have spent all the free time we have had cleaning, cleaning and throwing away stuff that was left behind in the flower shop. The former owner was here for 14 years and accumulated a mass of things that are unexplainable. From the non-working items that were just put in the back of the store (a coffee pot, a microwave, a refrigerator that had been re-purposed as a television stand, an old printer, two phones and a fax machine, just to name a few) to the 1000+ spools of ribbon, hundreds of baskets, etc. It has been an adventure just digging through what was in the back room.

Among some of my favorite things have been my new shop mascot (see picture left). I'm not sure if you can really see how hideous and filthy this thing is but I can only hope. I can tell you that this would frighten any new mother if received as a gift. If you take a closer look you can see how disproportionate its feet are too. Its like that episode of Seinfeld with the man-hands. Except this baby has man-feet. I think that you can kind of see the fur that has begun to grow on its tuft of hair in the photo. Its reminiscent of the kind of fur you see on the ceiling of a smoky bar.

Not to be outdone, the spooky baby troll has a friend, the scary furry dog/seal. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be a dog or a seal. Its feet flip back like a seal but he has a dog like tail. Another unsolvable shop mystery. At first glance, it looks like hes cute and furry but that's not a cute soft cuddly fur. That is the same nasty ceiling dirt-fur that has accumulated from not cleaning....EVER. He used to be white from what I can tell and has since been adopted by our local waste management service.

At any rate, I just thought I'd post these before I forgot and hope that you enjoy them as much as I have.

Nicole

Here we are....

So here is my first attempt at blogging....ever.

I think it would be interesting (maybe even slightly humorous) to document the process that we have started in buying a flower shop.  

Here is a a little background on us.....

Its been a long standing dream of mine to own a flower shop.  I thought it would be a great family business to own as it would allow us to bring children into the business giving them a good foundation and learn discipline and a good work ethic.

Over 20 years later I meet my boyfriend John and we constantly talk about opening up a small business.  One fateful afternoon we were going to stop by the American Legion Post for a beer and found them closed.  We took a detour and drove past a shop with a For Sale sign in the window.  

As a lark, I told my boyfriend to call on it.  We talked it over, brought our friend into the mix and found ourselves an experienced florist to run the shop for us.  So three weeks after we saw the sign and made the call, on October 1, 2008,  we signed the papers and became the proud owners of Andre's Flower Shop which we promptly renamed Blooms on the Square.

So with zero floral industry experience we plunged head first into turning around a failing flower shop.