Flower power keeps local florist blooming despite lockdown
Nina Friedlander, owner of BelleRose Flower Boutique
As we continue our series of interviews with local business owners, we catch up with Nina Friedlander, owner of BelleRose Flower Boutique in Leigh-on-Sea. Together, we discuss the implications of the recent national lockdown brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, the impact it has had on her business and the creative ways she adapted to survive and continue trading.
Legra Marketing: Hi Nina, thanks for agreeing to take part in our interview series. For those who don’t know you, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to open BelleRose?
Nina: Ok sure, well I’ve actually been practising floristry since I was 13. It was actually my first Saturday job as a teenager and I loved it, but as I got a older, got married and bought a house, I had to get a full time office job to help pay my mortgage and other financial responsibilities, but I still kept my floristry job going at weekends and sometimes I’d volunteer in my friend’s mum’s florist shop.
I’d always wanted to own my own shop but I didn’t want to open one where I lived at the time. At that time my husband Matt and I wanted to move to a new area and I came to Leigh for the day with my mum and instantly fell in love with the place. Within a year of moving here, I knew that this is where I wanted to open the shop. It probably would have been easy for me to just take over an existing florist, but I wanted to build up my own reputation from scratch and so this place came up for sale, which was originally a kids clothes shop, and I just went for it. We opened on 10 November, eight years ago and I haven’t looked back since.
Legra Marketing: Wow, that’s fantastic and takes a lot of guts. I think people probably underestimate what goes into starting your own business from scratch. Lot’s of hard work and sleepless nights! In terms of BelleRose, what makes it different from other florists in the area?
Nina: I love to buy flowers that are unusual. We have lots of tropical flowers and plants which look absolutely amazing in arrangements. I tend to go to different wholesalers in London as I find they have much more choice compared to some other wholesalers and a lot of our regulars always say they love coming here because we’ve always got something that they haven’t seen before and I love that.
As a business, it’s really important for us to stand out from the crowd and create gorgeous bouquets that don’t look like they’ve been bought from a supermarket. I’m so lucky to have really talented staff working here that have that creative flair that helps us maintain a certain level of brand perception that our customers have come to love and expect from us.
Something that is really fashionable at the moment is dried flowers, which you can buy from the wholesalers but I don’t want to buy in items that are ready made, so we dry our own which takes around four weeks and we’ve started to make our own arrangements and cards which have been hugely popular.
Legra Marketing: Awesome, it’s so important to offer something different as you say and have a unique offering to your business. In terms of the lockdown, how was that for you and how did it affect the business?
Nina: I think, at first we just panicked, like a lot of people all around the country and just left wondering what this was going to mean for our business and if we could carry on trading etc. Once we knew what we could and couldn’t do in line with the government guidelines, we just got on with it really.
I definitely used social media a lot more to get the word out that people could still have flowers delivered by us because at the end of the day, people still celebrated birthdays, anniversaries etc during lockdown. Instagram worked really well for us in terms of staying in touch with our customers and once people knew we were still trading and word got around to other people we saw loads of orders coming in and of course we started offering contactless deliveries.
At the height of the pandemic, I really wanted to do something to show our appreciation to all the NHS staff and key workers who were on the front line and keeping the country going. I put a message out on Instagram for people to get in contact with us and nominate someone and the reason why they were nominating them; I would then pick 10 people and send them a free bouquet of flowers. The response was phenomenal, we had so many nominations that I couldn’t pick between them, so we ended up sending them all a free bouquet to say thank you.
Legra Marketing: Amazing initiative, so I’m guessing because of the lockdown you saw a sharp increase in the number of deliveries you were making compared to usual?
Nina: 100%. We were literally doing deliveries all day but unfortunately I couldn’t give people an exact time of when their flowers would be delivered because I was working by myself so I had to just say AM or PM. Sometimes I was still delivering at 7pm because I was doing everything on my own.
Legra Marketing: And did you have to adapt your business in any way to cope with the demand and new way of working?
Nina: Well usually when I look at replenishing my stock, I would normally make a list of all my flowers and order what I need plus some extra because you know that with your pre-orders combined with passing footfall you’d generally sell out. With the lockdown however we lost that extra footfall which it made it really difficult to judge our stock levels. I couldn’t afford to have a lot of waste, but also had to try and anticipate what people would be ordering. I soon found out that if I posted a picture of pink and white flowers on Instagram for example, people would then contact me saying “I’ve just seen your picture on Instagram and I love them, can I order them please?”. That was great as it took some of the guesswork out of ordering new stock, so I guess we used the power of social media to help us work smarter.
I also had quite a lot of calls from customers in London because they just couldn’t find a local florist that was open so I found I was delivering to London quite a bit too. One gentleman contacted me asking for 60 red roses, one for every year he has been married, and he couldn’t find anywhere open to help him. I’m finding now that those customers I was able to help outside of the local area are now coming back to us.
Legra Marketing: That’s so lovely, as you say, people still celebrated birthdays and anniversaries etc during lockdown and great that you were able to help people from outside the local area too. Did you introduce anything that you think will now remain a permanent fixture of the way you run your business?
Nina: We’ve obviously changed the shop around a bit to support social distancing so I think that’s something we’ll still keep in place once COVID is brought under control. We actually sold so many plants during lockdown because everyone was working from home, and people wanted plant’s for their desks so we’re thinking of creating selection boxes with different plants in it and offering that as a service but we still need to iron out the logistics of that.
Legra Marketing: Nice! And what are the key lessons you’ve taken away from the whole experience?
Nina: Haha! Unfortunately, I’m one of those people who can’t switch off, so I think I’ve learnt that I need to force myself to have more of a work / life balance. If someone contacts us on social media, I have to respond to them asap, even if it's outside of the normal shop opening hours; so I think I need to learn to switch off a bit more. Being on top of your social media is like a full time job in itself!
Legra Marketing: Absolutely! It’s amazing how much of your time and energy goes into managing your social presence. Especially, if you have multiple channels to look after.
So what’s next for BelleRose?
Nina: Well, as I mentioned before, dried flowers are very popular at the moment so we’ll be putting together a lot more of them, but also keeping up the standards that people come to expect from us in terms of quality and variety of flowers and keeping up with the latest trends.
We’ve also collaborated with Stop the World café to host our Christmas wreath making classes which are happening in the last week of November. The response has been amazing and we completely sold out in less than 24 hours!
Legra Marketing: Thanks Nina, it was great chatting to you and best of luck with the wreath making classes.
Nina: Thanks guys!
BelleRose Flower Boutique are a designer flower boutique, with a wide selection of fresh flowers and plants that can add the wow factor to any occasion. Their experienced florists are always on hand to offer advice and guidance when choosing flowers, whether they be a gift, for your wedding, or to remember someone you love. Free consultations are on offer from the comfort of their beautiful boutique style shop.
*** 10% discount for all key workers and NHS staff. ***
Collect your loyalty card in-store and save £5 off your fifth order and £10 off your tenth.
Got your own lockdown story to tell?
Are you a local business owner that was forced to pivot your business in order to survive the national lockdown? If so, we would love to share your story.
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