Thorn In My Side

Guess what?  I've officially owned my business for two years now! Go me!! When I'm asked what I've learned from owning my own business I can't even begin to list all the many different things.  I mean, do I talk about the financial side (I would legit need a glass of wine in my hands to talk about that), the personal life-lessons, or do I talk about how I've learned that no matter what you do you can't avoid certain pit-falls or surprise expenses.  But instead of going into a laundry list of things that would bore you silly, I want to tell you about the biggest negative that's happened to me because it could and does happen to so many small business owners. First off, let me start out by saying that owning my flower shop is a dream come true and I truly enjoy bringing happiness to my customers and peace of mind during whatever event is taking place. I strive to make each person that comes in or calls feel special and I hope that they feel I'm doing just that. My ultimate goal is to convince everyone who orders from order-gatherers like "1-800-Daisy", "TeleBloom" and "BTD" to call me directly because we can make you something so much more special as well as use the money you are giving away to these large companies to make your arrangements so much more than what you think you're getting from them.  Just a quick side-note on that subject - if you give "BTD" let's say $100 I can guarantee that my shop will only see about $65.00 to $70.00 if we're lucky.  What that means is that you, as a customer, will not like what you ordered for someone because you're expecting a really large arrangement and not the actual recipe that we HAVE to use from these places.  Also, those "beautiful pictures" you see on their websites are one sided, meaning they put all of the flowers you see towards the front even though you're wanting an all-around arrangement (because that's freakin' normal).  Anyway, I digress...

A few years ago I was a stay-at-home mom and I needed something to get me out of the house.  It so happened that parents of a young lady on my daughters soccer team owned a flower shop and they were looking for some extra help at Valentine's day (we always look for some awesome people for that week and Mother's Day week).  They brought me on to help just for that week and I ended up loving it so much that I asked if I could stay on even if it was for just a few hours a week and luckily they liked me enough to say yes!  I was trained on how to make arrangements and all about flowers and plants but what I really loved was working with the public on the retail side even more.  Flash forward a few years...I made an offer to the current owners and we struck a deal!  I can't tell you how hard it is to buy a business, especially something like flowers.  Banks DO NOT like to give loans on something that they can't just take away from you if it fails.  However, my business plan was on point and I finally, after nine months of answering questions, tweaking my plan, going back and forth with the SBA, the bank, the owners, etc I became the proud owner of one the oldest and largest flower shops in my area.  September 15th was my two-year anniversary of owning Preston Flowers and Gifts!!  So, I'm telling you my history because it lends itself to what happened this year that was so disappointing and quite frankly just bad form.

The year after I had been working (not owning yet) at the shop it was time to bring in another group of willing individuals to lend a hand at Valentine's Day.  Every time we bring in a group of people we look for those certain people that we would love to keep if they are looking for a little extra income (fyi, this will not pay for a house...it may pay for you to convince your significant other to let you get your house cleaned - which I know because that's all I wanted to use the money for because I hate cleaning to be honest with you).  One person in particular, I'm not naming her, so I'll refer to her as Gertrude, showed great promise in her designing of flower arrangements and we definitely wanted to keep her on and train her more.  Gertrude was very talented and took to making floral designs like it was second nature and her personality fit right in with ours.  Gertrude learned everything she could which is what every owner and manager loves to see.  What we didn't expect was for her to take that knowledge and open up her own flower shop less than six miles away.  Now, I'm all for opening a small business and chasing your dreams but that was completely wrong...just plain wrong.  I know there's probably enough business to go around but why position yourself to directly compete with the place that took a chance on you and then trained you?  Why not go a little further away and have a different delivery area?  Literally the next town over needs a flower shop by the way (if you're interested I'll even help you write your business plan!). Gertrude and I could have supported each other and sent each other customers!  Each flower shop around here is fairly small and we truly believe in shopping local whenever possible especially when huge conglomerates like "Glamazon" sell everything and probably flowers someday too, so why make it harder to make ends meet for each other?!  I just don't understand and Gertrude sees nothing wrong with her decision.  When she told me they were going to do this I was genuinely happy for her until I found out where they were opening.  I honestly was cheering her on because I'm all about keeping our area filled with small mom-and-pop shops (I'd guess you'd call it).  It wasn't until I heard that they have the exact same delivery area as we have that it felt like a slap in the face.  I have no desire to make my employees fill out some crazy form having them promise not to do exactly what this person did and I won't start now because I truly believe that MOST people are better than that...but there is that small part of my now-jaded heart that thinks about it and I hate that feeling.

I'm sure some of you might not see the problem here but when it happens to you it stings...bad.  My Christian side wants to wish them all the luck but that other part of me...well, that's not my best side and that side has a potty mouth and not-so-nice thoughts on the matter.  I'm so grateful to have people that only shop with me because without those people I couldn't survive.  So I'm thanking those people that are loyal (some for over fourteen years) - without you, small businesses like my flower shop couldn't be here.  And to everyone that may read this...shop local and support your town, it's appreciated more than you will ever know.