We were lucky to catch up with Hope White recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Hope thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

The floral industry is a hard industry to survive in. We have become a society of ease and convenience. Don’t get me wrong, I want to cater to that. I want to make life easier for my customers. But, I do not want to make it so easy that they bypass me and go straight to the grocery store vegetable section to pick up their week old-driven around in a semi- thirsting to death- about to die- painted horrible colors- daisies on their way home from a busy day- easy. Or, click 1-800- I have no idea what I am selling you because I do not actually sell flowers in your time zone, to order an arrangement for $100. Then get it delivered the next week (because they couldn’t find a florist to deliver on the day you requested) to your mom next door. Now, this online service takes the order for my customer, takes out a service fee along with taxes and then sends it to me. I now only have $50.00 to make an arrangement and pay my delivery person to get it to their mom.. Love my customer’s heart, they see the arrangement on mom’s table, with my card on it, get so angry that it is half the size of what it should have been and calls me to complain! They don’t understand that in the fine print of the order originally placed that they agreed to that fee. All because he used an online service to be his middle man.

The best part of my job, the reason I do this every day are the weddings. I love weddings so much! I do birthdays, Holidays, just-because arrangements, and all the others, but weddings are my passion! Brides seek the beauty of the big extravagance that they see in the magazines and on television and then they seek out the DIY or the weddings on a budget to try to replicate these desires. Then it’s all downhill from there. Brides are brainwashed to believe they can order their flowers in a big box from the discount grocery warehouses and they will come straight to them the week of the wedding as beautiful as they are in the magazines with no work involved. Guess what? There’s a florist that prepped the flowers for the pictures in those magazines ladies! I have done so many last minute fixes that could have been avoided. It just takes slowing down and planning a little. I get it, everything is expensive now, but flowers for a wedding purchased twice, are well, twice as expensive.

And don’t get me started on those lovely ladies who just want to retire and come work at a flower shop because it looks like so much fun! Yes, it’s a lot of fun! It’s also a lot of blood, sweat and tears rolled into long, long, long hours on holiday week nights. And working hard for customers who sometimes just don’t understand why they are paying more than they did last year for flowers. Or they think that we should do it with no labor cost. Let me explain. Labor cost is what pays the designer and the overhead. Sometimes the customer doesn’t understand that it takes time, talent, electricity, rent, water, floralife (flower food), etc. Anyway, I digress. People do not see the hard work behind the scenes. The prep work, the bucket scrubbing, the cooler cleaning, the flower cutting and what we do to ensure the beauty and longevity of the flowers that come out of our flower shop. They just see the ease and fun of it all. We like that, we want that. But with no labor charges, there would be no designers to make the pretty arrangements, no electricity, no water, no flower shop, no ladies to come in and wish that they had a fun job to retire to.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My history starts with going to school for business. I worked as a store manager for a clothing company and then I got licensed to sell insurance as well as CDs & IRAs. I had always wanted to work at the family flower shop but my father wanted me to go to school and live first. Finally, at the age of 26 my father asked me to come and work with him. He had purchased the flower shop from his father who had owned it since 1962. He trained me how to do the book side of the business, and then taught me everything I needed to know about the flower side of the business. I made my first arrangement the first week I was there. I had never touched flowers before I started to work there. Granted, I had worked there for holidays and other times throughout the years growing up. I had worked as a delivery person or helped out making fruit baskets or dressing dish gardens, but I was never allowed to touch the flowers . They were sacred. After working a few years with my dad, he began to get sick. Soon after he retired. I ran the business by myself and then, along with my partner, we purchased the business from him in December 2014. Together, we moved the business to a new location, and have been growing ever since.

Now, 20 years in the floral industry, I still love playing with flowers. We have raised a daughter in this crazy, creative world. We had some ups and downs, almost lost it all a few times and with the support of some great friends and family we survived.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Being a young mother with a female partner entering into this adventure was not easy. We had a lot of hurdles and roadblocks in our way. Because we were newly incorporated, banks required that you be in business for 3+ years before they would loan to you. We couldn’t get funding. We needed a building and we needed funding to get us up and running. Yes we were lucky enough to be purchasing the business from my father. But not only were we buying the name and the clients, we were buying the company’s debt. So essentially there was no funding available to pay him. We were just starting out at a major disadvantage with debt to wholesalers who we really needed to pay and work with as well as find a new home to start fresh. The first year was very hard for us. We survived by depleting our savings and the wholesalers let us make small payments while we built our clientele. We found a place we could afford to rent. We ran the shop by ourselves with one employee who came with us from the previous ownership who had become more than just an employee, she became a friend. I designed and answered phones while Amy, my partner, delivered, managed social media and helped me with everything in between. We did everything from flower maintenance to the books together 7 days a week.
We gained new customers and lost a few old customers. Not just because of the move but because of the ownership change. Some welcomed us with open arms, some were just not ready for two young females to take the reins of a long standing family owned business.

At the end of that first year I thought we were not going to make it. We had no more savings. The business had not picked up enough to sustain us and I truly thought this was it. We were going to have to shut down. I had failed. I couldn’t do it. I cried for a week and then Amy said, “You are not going to give up. This is your dream. I moved here for you to do this. We are going to figure this out.”
The next week our landlord called and asked to meet for breakfast. I thought for sure this was the final straw and we were going to lose our shop for sure. I tend to take things to the extreme when I over think. But instead, they wanted to share some news that he was sick and she had decided to make some life changes for them. One of those changes was to sell the building that we were renting one of the suites in. They proposed that they wanted us to buy it and they were going to help us make it happen.
Now six years later, after purchasing the building. Hartman’s Flowers is surviving and thriving and we have 3 other tenants.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I feel that I am still building my reputation everyday. I need to show my work every chance I get. Put it out there. Let it be seen. That is the best way to build a reputation in my opinion. In the florist industry your creativity and talent is all you have and the only way to build it is to make sure it is seen by your potential brides so you can get weddings. Or seen by the events coordinators so you can get booked for parties. Or seen on social media platforms so the customers will call for the next birthday, thank you or just-because arrangements. Every day is an opportunity to build and be seen.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hartmansflowers.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hartmans_flowers
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hartmans_flowers
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/hartmansflowers
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/hartmansflowers
• Other: https://www.Pinterest.com/hartmansflowers, https://www.google.com/hartmansflowers