From Flower Child to Fearless NextGen Leader: Nicole Palazzo of City Line Florist
This week kicks off something new: Ellie's NextGen interview series, one-on-one conversations with floral professionals under forty, structured around past, present and future. Her first guest could not be more fitting — Nicole Palazzo, director of marketing for City Line Florist in Trumbull, Connecticut, chair of SAF's NextGen, newly inducted into AAF, and one of the industry's great connectors. She's also, like Ellie, a true flower child who grew up in the family shop.
The past: growing up a flower child
Nicole took the school bus to the flower shop — by choice. Her grandfather, the family patriarch, designed sympathy pieces and casket sprays while she filled water tubes, cut Oasis and greened arrangements, and the staff became her adopted aunts and uncles. Her core memories all live in that shop. After college (communications, with marketing and business) and a stint interning in New York's dance-music world, she admits she was "kidding myself" about any other career: she was always going to be a flower child, and the marketing role at City Line grew organically from sales associate onward — self-taught, little by little, including the back end of the shop's Gravity Free website.
For owners raising kids in the shop, her advice is honest. The one wound flower children share is missed moments — her mom cried after her brother was born during Mother's Day week out of guilt for not being at the shop, and a NextGen friend of Ellie's grew up resenting the business because his mom missed every game and play. So: hire an amazing team, pay a trustworthy manager well, delegate so you can be at the recital — and build the shop into a place kids want to be. Nicole had a TV, a VHS player and a basketball hoop; Ellie had a little bed in the inventory room and, later, a desk for playing office. Make the space grow with the kid.
The present: running a Connecticut shop from San Diego
Nicole's setup is one of the most unconventional in retail floristry: she works for City Line full-time from her apartment in San Diego's Little Italy. The former night owl is now up at 5 a.m. on East Coast hours — updating web orders, handling inquiries, then jumping on customer-service phones all day while juggling marketing, analytics and website merchandising. The magic is in the tools: a phone system from Ti (whose team shows up at SAF), and Teleflora's RTI configured on her laptop, so a phone that rings in Connecticut is answered in California and the order prints in Trumbull. Her point for anyone who needs flexibility — a sick relative, a season away: "It's easier than you think, but you have to have the right tools."
She also works for her best friend: her mom, Sue, who is also her boss. Is there a line between personal and business? "The line doesn't exist." They talk shop all day because the shop is their shared passion — and as Ellie points out, if it stopped working for either of them, they'd draw the line. It works, so why fix it?
Keeping it real on social media
Ellie asks for marketing advice for florists who lack the time, energy or skills to tell their story well. Nicole's first answer: hire the experts — let a company handle SEO, Google and the polished marketing so it's done right. But for the day-to-day feed, stop overthinking. Echoing a point from Mike Black's podcast, she says the behind-the-scenes photos she almost doesn't post — the ones with a weird chair or a stapler in the background — consistently get the most reach. Be real, be authentic, show in-store life, and save the perfection for the pros. She also hunts inspiration outside flowers entirely: the dreamy aesthetic of San Diego restaurant Morning Glory, other retail shops, other industries — "take the best bits of everything and apply it to your business."
The future: big, specific goals
Nicole says her goals out loud, which is half of why you believe them: take over the family shop one day (with a flower truck, a stem bar for events, and a market to the public on the wish list), keep growing NextGen after its momentum-filled first conference, revive the defunct Connecticut Floral Association, land on the cover of SAF's Floral Management, one day serve as SAF president from the retail side — and, somewhere in there, create a business retreat for industry friends. Her fuel is the people: NextGen conversations, conferences like Fun 'N Sun, and the feeling of having found her people.
Key takeaways
- If your kids grow up in the shop, make it a place they choose: comfortable space, welcoming staff, and a parent who never misses the game.
- Remote work is possible even in retail floristry — cloud phone systems and POS tools can put your shop anywhere.
- Hire experts for the polished marketing, then post the imperfect behind-the-scenes moments yourself; authenticity outperforms perfection.
- Look outside the flower industry — restaurants, retail, design — for inspiration you can bring back to your shop.
- Write down big, specific goals and say them out loud; the volume of work closes the gap between your taste and your output.
Connect with Nicole: @citylineflorist, @misscoleybaby, or nicole@citylineflorist.com.