We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lisa, Lowrie, and Lacey Kala’i. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lacey below.

Lisa Lowrie, appreciate you joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

Lace and Lilies have been in business for over 10 years now. We created it, out of a love for flowers, creativity, and pushing the limits past everyone’s expectations. We wish we could say that we envisioned it to be as big as it is now, 10 years later, however, this has even exceeded our initial dream.

We are absolutely convinced that it all began not only in the right place at the right time when there was a need for something new and fresh in our industry, but it also came at the perfect time in our life. We were in our mid 20’s and had little to no commitments holding us back. We were all in and gave it everything we had from the start. We talked about our new business, to anyone that would listen. We handed out business cards and lookbooks to anyone that would put their hand out. We frequented every social event in our city and surrounding. We did hustle hard and did things for little to no money so that everyone knew we were serious and here to stay.

As the word spread, our company grew and with that new growth, we maintained a balance and steady pace. We have never taken on more than we can handle and we have always kept the growth within our means. Of course, you have dreams of bigger and better on your mind every single day, however, it takes patience and diligence to get there. (Swear on everything, we didn’t budget for a trash can and did not buy one for the first 2 years)

Here we are today, 10 years in and loving the journey that got us to this point. We have been recognized as Martha Stewarts’ top 60 florists in the nation since 2015, along with many awards within our town, county, and state! We are humble, we work harder than anyone we know and we know what it takes to get to the top! Now we have marriages, children, and families that need a little more of our time and we love how incredible of a team we have that can help give us the balance we deserve!

Lisa Lowrie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Lace and Lilies is a full-service wedding and event florist with a fun and local twist! We provide flowers and decor for over 100 weddings a year in Colorado and beyond. We teach floral design and wreath classes. We deliver flowers to homes and businesses on a weekly subscription. We now offer local flower deliveries each week Thursday-Sundays and hope to grow this even more in the future. We believe in giving everything we do, our all and it shows through our commitment to our clients, the other businesses we work with, and with our floral creations! We came into this industry, ready to change the scene and add more love, fun, and creativity to everyone’s lives and we have done that, every day for the last 10 years and we are not stopping now! We care. We are obsessed with flowers and we love love! The sky is the limit and we push ourselves with everything we do, to reach that!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When the world pandemic hit our community, we were 8 days out from the largest wedding of our careers. This completely destroyed everything that we had been working towards for the last 8 years and left us (along with everyone else) feeling helpless and with no control over anything we planned. The most important thing we have learned is to pivot. When the time comes, you have to stop everything, throw out your game plan and start fresh. If you can not pivot, you will not be able to conquer the unforeseen events life hands you. We got through that situation and had the biggest mess still ahead. When the wedding industry was completely shut down and a year’s worth of our only income was gone, we had to pivot, reposition ourselves for success, and dream a new dream for ourselves and our team. We decided to open up on Mothers Day, 2020 as a local, everyday flower shop with no contact deliveries Thursday-Sundays. Our community supported us, we supported our team and in the end, we grew bigger than before this all started. With the wedding industry back in action and our local flowers still growing bigger each month, we proved to ourselves that we can, in fact, handle anything that is thrown our way and turn it into a positive, growth experience.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

We met in the floral industry, new to the state of Colorado, and looking for a friend to adventure with. We met up for a beer outside of work and decided to take on ONE wedding flower gig, to help a friend of a friend. Working together and creating the most beautiful floral experience for the sweetest bride and groom and all of their loved ones, left us in tears. It was from that moment on, we partnered up and reached for the stars. We are thankful every day for our young hearts and fearless attitudes that pushed us to where we are today!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://laceandliliesflowers.com/
• Instagram: laceandlilies
• Facebook: @laceandlilies
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laceyhamel
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lace_and_lilies
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/lace-and-lilies-fort-collins-2

Image Credits
Business Photos 1. The De La Castros 2.  Amy Caroline Photography 3. Lisa O’dwyer Photography 4. Sarah Porter  5. Steve Stanton Photography 6. Amy Caroline Photography