Today we’d like to introduce you to Ines Garstecki.
Hi Ines, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’m originally from East Germany. My family moved to West Germany in 1983 (before the wall came down) to Munich. In 1998 I came here to Los Angeles with a student visa and got a degree in Marketing from UCLA. Fresh out of school I started to work for a German software company, climbed the corporate ladder – always in Marketing – until I realized that this corporate world is not for me. I had too much of an entrepreneurial spirit to do a 9-5. So I quit, went traveling for seven months and started Flowermaid when I returned. That was in 2003. Since then, I have gradually built up the business from a tiny weekly bouquet subscription delivery service to a flourishing flower design company. We mainly handle events – anything from baby showers, mitzvahs, milestone birthdays, weddings, galas – and recently also were asked to provide set flowers for TV shows such as Hacks, Westworld and a new Apple TV show called Miss American Pie which will air in summer 2023.
Over the years it’s been a constant climb – mainly through word-of-month – from small weddings to large really fancy ones (just recently did flowers for actress/producer Emily Goldwyn, granddaughter of Samuel Goldwyn), from weekly accounts for small offices to large weekly loads for country clubs, and so on. Over the years we created flowers for clients like Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Michael Keaton, the Pritzker Family, etc.
My father was the one who indirectly brought me to flowers. He was a flower breeder and developed new color combinations for carnations and chrysanthemums. As kids, he often took us along to his greenhouses or to flower stores that purchased flowers from him that he grew on the side. It was a short period in my childhood since he died when I was 5, but other than that I have no other explanation how I switched from software marketing to flowers.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
When I tell people I have a flower business they usually always marvel, “Oh, how lovely!” Nobody quite knows what it takes to make these magazine-perfect weddings happen. It’s a ton of hard work. I spend countless early morning hours at the LA flower market to hand select the best flowers, then all day on my feet arranging, designing, prepping events, doing hectic setups, always on a deadline and always in a rush. Evenings are often taken up by doing budgets and shopping lists for the next morning, proposals, and any necessary paperwork. It’s not a business for everybody. I never know how my next week looks like, often not even my next day. Things constantly change and you have to be super flexible. You have to be able to work well under pressure, troubleshoot on an instant, never panic and still be the cheerleader for your team. I have a team of five regular employees, plus extra freelance designers on larger production days. Finding a work-life balance is definitely my biggest challenge. This crazy business doesn’t leave much room for leisure. Thank God it’s more or less seasonal and the summer months are milder (July and August) and winter (Jan -March). That’s when I can recuperate, travel, do my house projects and hobbies.
My first three years were tough. People told me it takes three years to start a business and build it to a point where you can live from it. I had to take a part-time job those first few years to make ends meet. After three years I created enough of a momentum that I was able to completely support myself through it. Now I’m proud to create my work and income. I don’t depend on an employer and have the freedom where to lead this business.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I love to create beauty, so flowers are a perfect medium for that. I especially love to create large installations for events with sprawling displays of flowers ‘climbing’ up a wall or ‘growing’ into a room through a window from the outside. I love to recreate nature in that way, placing every stem or vine or branch as if it grew there naturally. I love to play with colors and fine-tune shades so the composition is most pleasing to the eye.
When working with flowers, people usually think of a flower shop. I never owned one and never even worked in one either. I have a warehouse-style studio in West Adams with tons of space to create large events, set flowers, hold flower workshops, film flower tutorials, invite kids to play with flowers, and more. It leaves me a lot more freedom than a regular retail flower store.
When working with brides and event clients, I try to listen to the small details they point out of what they like and what not, what their vision is and design their flowers according to their input. Listening and asking the right questions is what made me hit the mark again and again.
I love the challenge of putting large event productions together. There is always some amount of adrenaline rush involved in the process. And it’s always a nice reward to see a successful event setup done with a happy bride (or event planner) and to pat myself on the shoulder and tell myself “You did it again!”
It’s a complex process from booking the crew, successfully sourcing all the flowers, vases and other materials for each event, production schedules, designing until everything is all done, having enough flowers and not too many leftovers, planning out delivery vehicles, pickup vehicles, etc. Lots of pieces to the puzzle.
Like most creatives, I don’t like working on paperwork – invoices, proposals, creating budgets and those sorts of things. But it’s part of it and I’ll try to hire people that like to do these tasks more than me.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love the many facets of LA, the different neighborhoods that are all so different and its diversity. I don’t think I would still be here if people here wouldn’t be from all over the world. I don’t like the traffic and that the city is so big. You spend too much time in the car and have to really think about it, if you should visit that friend on the other side of town. Unfortunately.
Pricing:
- Arrangements starting at $75
- Average weddings usually start at $10k and up
Contact Info:
- Website: www.flowermaid.com
- Instagram: flowermaidLA
- Facebook: flowermaidLA
Image Credits
#2: Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO Max Hannah Einbinder, Jean Smart HBO MAX Hacks Season 1 – Episode 1 #3: Anne Marie Fox/HBO Max #8-10 Clay Austin Photography rest is photographed by me or my team
