We recently connected with Amber Holmes and have shared our conversation below.
Amber, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.
Our Franchisee Renee Pea opened a FauxReal Flowers location in the Greater Tampa Bay area just last year – and she’s loving it! Wanting to be passionate about her career, she decided to franchise with us, opening her own faux flower shoppe. She already has 1 event per weekend booked, and is adding to her 2024 events as she goes! Joining the FauxReal team and opening a franchise – she completed her 2 week training passing with flying colors. We helped her get to new shop organized, all set up with our high quality florals and branding. Some networking advice and she’s taken it from there! She is a natural at making beautiful flower arrangements and we’re so happy to see her owning a business that she truly loves. We’re thrilled for all the brides and events that now get to rent their dream flowers in Tampa Bay!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
We offer luxury faux flowers for rent for weddings and events. Opening in Raleigh in 2020, we doubled in a year, the need for this was so big! Weddings are so expensive, and fresh flowers are a large junk of the budget. We’re able to provide the same look for about half the cost of fresh flowers. Couples are able to customize their exact floral vision, and it’s made especially for them. All set pricing, no matter which flowers they choose.
Brides were asking for us states away, so we decided to Franchise in 2022, and have 6 new locations so far. We solve the problem of expensive flowers with out people skimping on their floral vision. It’s a statement piece for any event that we’ve made easily available!
Now we’re on the hunt for more locations – open one in your hometown now! We aim to be the go-to florist for weddings & events in all areas.
We also provide florals for TV & Movie sets – check us out in Zoey 101 and The Summer I Turned Pretty!
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Vendor networking is the best! Vendors hear their couples complain about their flower budget, and they finally have a solution, FauxReal! Meeting everyone in the area and spreading the word on the options we offer has really helped get our business out there. We aim to be on preferred vendor lists so that couples and event planners can easily find us. And we stress to our franchisee owners to do the same in their areas,
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Originally my business partner and I started this while still working our full time jobs. Weddings typically book us 6months or more out, so we knew when they work was coming! It was a large struggle once our events picked up, and we had to make the decision to dive in to be able to take on more work, and we’re so glad we did! Key milestone being the stress we noticed, and then the weight that was lifted when we decided to focus solely on our business, and it’s done nothing but grow since we made that decision.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.fauxrealflowers.com
- Instagram: @fauxreal_flowers
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FauxRealFlowersNC
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fauxreal-flowers/
Image Credits
Insta @Lusuriellophotography