Check Out Natalia Ponomareva’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Natalia Ponomareva

Hi Natalia, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hi! My name is Natalia Ponomareva and I’m the founder of flower brand Flonet.
We were founded in 2022, my mother was really passionate about flowers but she didn’t know how to promote it, and I decided to take everything in my hands. In 2022 we came up with idea that we can sell bouquets and promote it on the instagram, but I’m a bit more ambitious and I was already looking in the future that if we are doing it, I want to be a flowers stores net, and that’s how we came up with the name FLONET, witch stands for Flowers(flo) Net.
We started posting our bouquets on the instagram and I was spreading the word about us through my personal page and we started getting some orders and while we were making our first orders I was creating cute looking and sellable (how I though) content.
And now, it’s been 2 years almost, maybe a little less and 2-3 months ago we finally opened our first physical location in heart of Studio City(before that we did everything from home). And as of now we are learning new ways of getting more customers because we truly love what we are doing and we want as many as possible people could get flowers from us

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?
It wasn’t smooth at all, since we didn’t have any sponsors or any support, it was just me and my mother, we had to do everything ourselves, making an arrangements, sometimes it was huuuge and we had to find someone who could help us to deliver them, also not all of the times we had enough orders so we had to be finding part time jobs to keep investing money in the FLONET, so pretty much, the hardest part is financial part

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m the founder of Flonet and also we are opening a creative space next to it, where we are planing to host workshops and dance classes, the name is FloMove, it’s still under construction but we are really excited about it
But at first I was a professional dancer, originally I’m from Russia and I came here to study theatre and dance arts in Santa Monica College and after 2 semesters I realised that I don’t want to do dancing as my profession but I want to keep it as a hobby that I really really like
But while i was trying to figure out what I want to do for my living, I tried photography, I was a personal sport couch, then a dance trainer(I hosted my classes) and after that I went to work at the restaurant as a helper with a show(looking like a cirque du soleil) and there I met a guy that while he was working at the restaurant he was making something else, and then I realised that he is trying to make an appliance company, while he was having time in between work on work, and I was really inspired by him, because I’ve never thought of becoming an entrepreneur but he showed me another way, that you not only can work on someone, but you also can work on yourself. It took me 4-5 months to understand what I can do, and then I realised that I have such a talented person in my family(my mom) who has been doing florals for over 15 years in Russia and I decided to give it a shot, and eventually it went successfully

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Anything you can imagine, you can do it, you have no limits. I think I had so many doubts and I was so insecure about myself and about my abilities of doing something.
Also, one more thing, that I took from this, is that you shouldn’t listen to anyone, they are telling you their own fears

Contact Info:

• Website: https://flonet-us.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flonet.us?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090944817447&mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@flonet?si=l8-yWidk3yYMki5E
• Yelp: Check out Flonet
• Other: https://g.co/kgs/4UMUfG7