We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lindsay Homister a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Lindsay, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Back in 2020, my husband, Dave, happened to find a roadside flower stand on his way home and started bringing me home a bouquet of fresh flowers each week.

Knowing the joy and feeling of being loved by receiving a surprise gift of flowers, I realized that was something we didn’t have in our community.

I decided to start learning a bit more about what growing flowers in our short summer season of Michigan would look like. And then, with plenty of Dave’s help, I started turning our vegetable garden space into our very own small scale flower farm.

We aim to offer locally grown, fresh, and affordable flowers to help spread love and joy all spring, summer, and fall!

Lindsay, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Back in 2020, my husband, Dave, happened to find a roadside flower stand on his way home and started bringing me home a bouquet of fresh flowers each week.

Knowing the joy and feeling of being loved by receiving a surprise gift of flowers, I realized that was something we didn’t have in our community.

It became clear that fresh flowers are that deep breath you didn’t know you needed. They bring brightness and joy to your kitchen counter. They give you pause to smile and know you’re celebrated and loved. They provide a sense of calm, a treat, a recharge.

As Dave would bring me home flowers each week, I started researching about growing. What equipment and space would we need to grow our own. What varieties of flowers could succeed without a greenhouse or large overhead. What commitment would be needed as we both have full time jobs to balance.

We did a small trial of growing just for ourselves in 2021 and from there, really expanded our knowledge and growing capabilities to offer fresh flowers to our community starting in 2022.

We aim to offer locally grown, fresh, and affordable flowers to help spread love and joy all spring, summer, and fall!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Honestly, for me, the lesson I’ve had to unlearn is that success isn’t built on the size of your online presence.

For our business, we have two primary customers we’re trying to reach — our local community members and other flower farmers.

Our local community members love our stand and reach out to share that, but also spread their support by word of mouth and gifting our flowers. They aren’t constantly looking for the next reel or post on our page to decide to enjoy our products.

So for us, it’s more about a balance of growing some connections with other flower farmers online while really balancing our community connection. To connect with other farmers, we use targeted posts, specific group engagement, and showing some growing tips and tricks along the way. This way, when we offer products, like our spring and fall dahlia tuber sales, we have built relationships with our farming community without having to worry about how many likes or follows come along with that.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

For us, building brand loyalty really comes down to being consistent in our product availability and always working with our customers to meet their needs. Whether that means a 10pm harvest for a last minute bulk bucket that a panicking customer needs for their next day event, or if that means creating a remembrance bouquet full of emotion. Our goal is to be the first solution for flowers to our community.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homistersfreshflowers?igsh=d3J5aTlhaGcwN3Fp&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/15jiRtfeNs/?mibextid=wwXIfr
• Other: homistersfreshflowers@gmail.com

Image Credits

Dear Olive Photography