We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kelsey Breland and Kailie Dunlap. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kelsey below.

Kelsey and Kailie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Kailie’s first job when she was 16 in high school was working at a florist. She fell in love with everything floral and decided to obtain a Floral Design degree through Mississippi State University under the care and direction of Dr. James DelPrince, AIFD and Mrs. Lynette McDougald, AIFD. While Kailie was earning her degree in floral design, Kelsey was working on her business degree, also at Mississippi State University. After they completed their degrees, they moved back home and worked at a florist together. Kailie was Kelsey’s manager. This is when they realized they actually work great together! A couple years later, they both went to work for the same corporation in 2017. Kailie was the Quality Control Manager and Kelsey was a Purchasing Agent. While working there, they realized the corporate world was not for them. Kailie missed designing flowers and they both wanted a more flexible work schedule that worked better with family time and kids in the future. The sisters dreamed of opening a flower shop together one day, but really didn’t think it was possible since owning your own business seemed so daunting- especially right out of college. After working for a few years, the girls decided to go to graduate school together in 2020 to earn their Master’s degrees in Business Administration. Only weeks after being accepted into grad school, Kelsey found out she was pregnant. She contemplated whether or not to continue to go back to school, or wait until after the baby came. She felt in her heart that she needed to continue to chase her dreams and go forward with earning her MBA. After all, she is the one who convinced Kailie to apply to grad school with her, so there was no way she could leave Kailie hanging. Kelsey had her daughter on March 31, 2o21, which also just to so happens to be Kailie’s birthday as well. While on Maternity leave, Kelsey realized she did not want to go back to the corporate world: working 8-4:30 (plus weekends when the boss said so), wondering if she had enough PTO built up for when her daughter had a doctor’s appointment or had to stay home, or having to ask permission to leave work early if the baby got sick at school, and all the other mom thoughts that go through your mind as you rock your newborn baby in your arms. All of this was during Covid, so when Kelsey’s boss called and asked her when she would be back from Maternity leave, she asked if she could work from home. The answer was no, so Kelsey decided to quit her job. She now had plenty of time on her hands to research and learn what all was required to open her own business. Once realizing it was very doable, she called Kailie and told her to quit her job- that they were going to finally open their flower shop! Kailie laughed in disbelief, but once Kelsey explained all of the footwork she’s already done and how easy it was going to be, Kailie saw that Kelsey was serious and knew she had get on board to keep the ship sailing. A few months later, Kailie quit her job as well. With much prayer, determination, and faith, the girls opened their flower shop, Honeysuckles- A Floral Boutique, on November 3, 2021. Only six months later, the sisters graduated from Mississippi State University with their MBAs in May of 2022. They are still loving their decisions they made to jump, chase their dreams, and follow their hearts even when the future looked uncertain. Leaving a corporate salary job with a steady paycheck, benefits, and 401k, seemed intimidating, and thoughts of if they would make it or not were a battle, but the overwhelming joy the sisters get when they stand back and look at how much they have been blessed and how far they have come, Kailie and Kelsey know without a shadow of a doubt that they made the right decision to open their own business.

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?

I Provided some background on how we got into floral profession in previous section.

Kailie Dunlap- 33 years old. Mother of two very independent dachshunds, Eliza Jo and Heidi. Loves to turn into a raisin in a bubble bath, try new cuisine every chance she gets, and is always down to go walking/hiking.

Kelsey Breland- 31 years old. Married, mother of 2 children, 4 dogs, and 1 cat who thinks she’s a dog. Enjoys coffee at any time of the day, listening to Morgan Wallen on repeat, and binge watching The Nanny. Board member of Roadside Rescue Network- a local animal rescue shelter in Meridian, MS.

We are a full service florist, meaning we create custom arrangements for events, weddings, funerals, and other daily occasions. The main thing that sets us apart is Kailie’s creative design style. Our arrangements are created custom for each order, so no two arrangements ever look the exact same. We are not a “look book” type of florist. We often have people tell us, “I knew that was from Honeysuckles just by the style.” or “I can always tell when you guys do the flowers!”
In addition to flower arrangements, we offer a wide assortment of indoor house plants and gift items as well. We have a program we call “Pick a plant, Pick a pot” where the customer can choose the plant and container they would like, and we pot the plant in the container for them. Plant stakes and pot hangers are popular, so we carry a variety to choose from. People also bring in plants they have at home for us to repot in a larger container, groom, and freshen up with new soil. No other shop in our town pots their plants in ceramic containers or offers a plant grooming service, so these areas set us apart as well.
Another thing that makes our shop stand our is our rainbow wall. Our entire back wall in the shop is filled with vases and containers of every color of the rainbow. We have people come visit our shop just to see the rainbow wall in person.

The main thing we want people to know about us that we give all of the glory to God. None of this would be possible without him opening and closing every door for us. There we plenty of highs and lows along the way of opening the shop, but we made it! We are beyond blessed to have our own business, doing what we love every day, and being able to bring the kids to work with us!

We are most proud of having the faith to take the leap and open a successful business, especially with all of the challenges that were created during Covid . Increased cost of flowers and supplies, contactless delivery, and people scared to shop in public were all hurdles we had to jump over to keep our business afloat. One day we will be able to pass this shop on to our children and show them what we were able to build from determination and drive.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Building a reputable business was one of our main focuses when starting Honeysuckles. Quality arrangements, great customer service, and establishing personal relationships with our customers are some of our core values. Meridian is a small town in Mississippi, so having good relationships with our customers is a top priority. Greeting our customers by name, remembering that they like and dislike, and having genuine conversations all build a solid relationship with each of them. Pretty soon, our loyal customers are more like family; we know exciting events they have coming up, when they are expecting their first grandchild, surgeries they have scheduled, and probably what their Thanksgiving plans are! Having personal relationships make the floral arrangements more special as well. When a customer truly feels welcome and comfortable with our business, they are sure to let their friends and family know. After all, word of mouth spreads faster than a message on a billboard.
Consistently creating quality arrangements is a daily goal we strive for. Recipients and customers often call to tell us that their beautiful arrangement has lasted for weeks when following the flower care card we include in each bouquet. In our shop, we use mainly premium blooms, and choose to refrain from using lower quality flowers that are often found in grocery stores. Customers appreciate the unique flowers we incorporate into our arrangements, and are eager to learn about new varieties of plants and flowers they did not know existed.

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

Kailie and I had a bumpy childhood growing up, which taught us early on in life that if we wanted to be happy and successful, that we would have to work had to disregard the adversity around us and never lose sight of our goals. Our parents had a pretty nasty divorce that lasted about five years, which took a toll on us in elementary and middle school. We moved schools when we were in middle school and high school, which is a sensitive time in any teenage girl’s life. Being the new girl and making new friends isn’t always the easiest when people have already labeled you as “the private school girl” before you even introduce yourself. And to top it all off, we had back to back step-mothers for 20 years who were not role models by any means. When we told our dad and stepmother at the time about our dreams of opening a flower shop together, she had the audacity to tell us that “it would never work”, that people would never support our shop, and that Kelsey would be “piggybacking” since she didn’t go to floral design school like Kailie did. All of that to say, we had plenty of sources of doubt and reasons to sit on the back burner and throw a pity party when it came to pursuing our dreams of opening our shop. We both knew in our hearts to ignore the negativity and to concentrate on chasing our dreams. There were plenty of other mountains along the way that kept telling us we would never make it, and voices from the past that tried to creep in, but we stuck together like we always have since we were kids, and kept our heads held high. God has always had his arms around us, and he wasn’t going to let go of us now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://honeysucklesfloral.com/
• Instagram: honeysuckles_floral
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/honeysucklesfloral Honeysuckles- A Floral Boutique

Image Credits

Jessica Greene photography- cover photo of Kailie & Kelsey and picture of Kailie making arrangement.

We, Kailie and Kelsey, took the rest of the pictures ourselves.