How Did You Get Started in the Flower Business? Our Cliquers Share their Story in This Spotlight Episode
Ask a florist how they got into this business and you never know what you'll hear. This month's Cliquer Spotlight proves it twice over. Lori sits down with two Flower Clique members — Jan from Malone's Flower Shop in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and Judy Hebert of Flowers & Leaves in Oshkosh, Wisconsin — and gets two origin stories that could not be more different, plus a stack of practical wisdom about what actually grows a shop. As Vonda says at the top: while you listen, reflect on what sets your business apart, because that's what should make you proud.
"Truthfully, I was going to a church that thought the world was gonna end"
Jan's answer to the how-did-you-start question is one for the ages. As a high school senior, she spent her time in the guidance office looking for the fastest thing she could learn — and flower school was three weeks. "I didn't want to die having only gone to school," she laughs. Forty-six years later, she figures God must have had a plan.
She's spent 33 of those years at Malone's, starting as a freelancer working designers' days off. And she never stopped learning: floral school in Oklahoma, commentating courses, helping train and test designers through FTD's master designer program, SAF weekend events, and time with AIFD. Nearly five decades in, she's still a believer in continuing education.
Customer service, demonstrations, and 500 women at breakfast
Asked the secret to her shop's growth, Jan doesn't hesitate: customer service. The proof shows up in the review confirmations Flower Clique sends — after one recent weekend, all three brides had reached out with praise by Monday morning. Her other engine is community visibility: demonstrations for women's groups, church groups, and senior citizens' groups, plus a fundraiser where 500 women come to breakfast and watch her design. "People feel like they know you and they know your shop," she says — and it works.
One more number worth sitting with: Jan has noticed people spend far more on the website than they do on the phone. Lori confirms it's true across the board, and explains why — on the phone, we try to be good stewards of the customer's money and quote low, while the website simply starts with the full range. If your web average beats your phone average, you're not alone; it's a reason to make sure your site is doing the selling.
From art major to shop owner — Judy's winding road
Judy started college as an art major, fell in love with a botany class, and ended up with a horticulture degree after a counselor pointed her toward garden design. She worked garden centers, greenhouses, landscape and interior plant maintenance, wholesale, retail, and mass market before buying her shop in 2017 — from an owner who had inherited it by default, knew nothing about floral, hired Judy to manage it, and then convinced her to buy it.
The reputation had deteriorated and there were no customer records, so Judy changed the name, changed the decor, and essentially started from scratch. Her focus became a true niche: everything in Flowers & Leaves is flower or leaf related — no wall of random giftware. Even the art on her walls is close-up photos of her own wedding bouquets, a display idea any shop could steal.
Stay true to your goal, not the recipe orders
Judy's growth secret is discipline: staying true to her values and the shop she wants to be instead of letting wire-service recipe orders define her. Customers will always shop the competitors, the internet, and the grocery store — but the ones who find her shop get won over by honesty, integrity, knowledge, and problem-solving. And inspiration keeps arriving, most recently in the form of a local flower farmer who pulled up with a truck full of grasses, foliage, and curly willow she had no idea existed nearby.
Both members were also asked to answer the question Flower Clique itself finds hard: what is Flower Clique? Jan called it a lifesaver — website help, "Can Do Cammy" fixing issues immediately, and flower bunches that saved her Mother's Day when funeral work had buried the shop. Judy called it "a resource, an answer, a service, and a friend" — a community you can trust with the days you just need to vent.
Key takeaways
- Your web average sale is probably higher than your phone average — humans quote low to be helpful, so let your website start the conversation high.
- Community demonstrations — church groups, senior groups, fundraisers — make people feel they know you, and that familiarity turns into orders.
- A tight niche (like "everything flower or leaf related") gives your community one clear thing to remember you for.
- Stay true to your own vision and standards instead of letting recipe orders and order gatherers define your shop.
- Continuing education pays off at every stage of a career — Jan is still taking classes 46 years in.
Want to share your own start-in-flowers story? Join the conversation in the Business and Pleasure of Flowers Facebook Group.