Today we’d like to introduce you to Hong Nguyen.
Hong, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
After I graduated high school in 2000, I spent a few years in community college trying to figure out what I wanted to major in. I knew I had a creative side but I didn’t know what to apply it to. I’ve always liked art and design, so I took a few art classes, tried out architecture, and interior design but none of those subjects stuck with me. After a few years, I still couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do and like many of my peers, I felt lost so I took a break from college and started working an office job.
I didn’t discover my love for flowers until I took an introductory floral design class in 2004. After learning about the very basic fundamentals of floral design, I was really interested in making a career out of it. I started off by selling flowers for Mother’s Day to my close friends, family, and coworkers. After a successful sell-out, I decided that maybe flowers were my niche. I continued to do floral design on the side while working a full-time job. After a few corporate events and a couple of weddings, I gave up on the idea of making a living off it since it was extremely time consuming, labor intensive, and the margins were non-existent. I stopped daydreaming and decided to go back to school in 2009 in pursuance of my degree. Since I knew I wanted to own my own business one day, I transferred to Cal State Fullerton in 2009 and pursued a degree in Entrepreneurship. After a year of working full-time and attending classes, I got bored and decided that the degree wasn’t important so I started doing research on how to open a business. Since working with flowers sparked an energy in me I was not able to feel from anything else, I decided to finally pursue a career in floral design. I expressed my future plans to my superiors at the company I was working for at that time and they had graciously agreed to help me acquire as much knowledge and gain as much experience as possible while working through the various departments that would benefit me.
In the summer of 2010, I quit my job and decided it was time to move forward with my plan. Some people make it a goal to be married by 30, I wanted to run my own business by that age. I had just turned 29 so for me, it was now or never. I looked at a lot of retail locations and finally found one I thought would work. I contacted the broker, walked thru the property, and within a few days of negotiating my lease terms, I signed the lease and the keys were mine. It was now 2011 and the Lunar New Year was only a few weeks away so I thought it’d be a great idea to have my grand opening the weekend of the new year. I am not a superstitious person but I needed all the help I could get so timing was everything. With the help of my extremely supportive and skillful family and friends, we tore the place up and turned it into my little flower shop.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Definitely not. Anyone can open a business but not everyone has what it takes to run one. It requires a lot of time, dedication, sacrifice, hard work, and literally blood, sweat, and tears. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve sliced and slammed my fingers, brutalized my hands, blistered my skin from working under the intense sun, bruised my body, and cried for hours on end. It’s a rough and extremely labor-intensive business. Aside from the physical beatings my body endures, my mind and emotional state are always on edge.
Although I enjoy doing what I do, I admit, it’s not always unicorns and rainbows or in my case, sunshine and flowers, I guess? Running a flower shop doesn’t mean I play with flowers all day. It’s actually what I do only 20% of the time. The other 80% of my time is spent managing employees, picking up flowers, training, cleaning, marketing, accounting, payroll, meetings with potential clients for weddings, emails, and whatever else needs to be done at the shop. Why don’t I hire people to do all that or why don’t I outsource some of these jobs? Well, florists don’t make as much money as people think they do. They create some of the most beautiful works of art but like all other artists, we struggle. Not all artists struggle but most do.
If I had to choose the biggest struggle, for me, it would be finding assistants who care about what they do. I love what I do and I have total respect for customers who buy my product. Customer satisfaction is extremely important to me. I’m in retail so I get people I cannot please but I try really hard to make sure people are happy with the results of my work. During training, and work every day, I emphasize on how important it is to make our customers happy. Everyone works hard to earn their money so we must respect every penny that people spend in our store. I’ve been very fortunate to have hired great people but a majority of them don’t stay after they experience how much labor it requires working at a flower shop. I always respect their decision to leave but it does set me back and the hiring process starts all over again. If I could clone myself and make ten of me, life would be so grand.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Pink, the little flower shop – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
We are a little flower shop, hence the name Pink, the little flower shop. I opened the shop back in 2011 so it has been almost six and a half years. I started this business thinking I could do whatever designs I wanted, use all the flowers I love, and people would love it and give me money for it. I quickly learned that was not the case. Everything I wanted to do, I couldn’t. One of the reasons I opened this shop was to express myself creatively but reality set in and I had to slowly and painfully learn that running a business means catering to your customers’ wants/needs not yours. After many years of arranging flowers and thousands of arrangements sold, I have now finally earned that privilege to express myself creatively. I have built a clientele of amazing people who trust my work and a reputation that allows new customers to put their trust in what I do.
Roughly 80% of our sales comes from retail and the other 20% comes from events such as weddings, baby showers, birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, and corporate events. We try to get creative with the retail side so it’s not just an arrangement you’re buying but a form of your personal expression to whomever you’re gifting the flowers to. Our most popular items are our character flowers. We take flowers and turn them into whichever animated character or animal you elect. We’ve done pandas, bears, dogs, koalas, penguins, tigers, monkeys, cats, bunnies, minions, pigs, and a lot of others. It’s time consuming but the end product brings me joy so hopefully customers get that same feeling, if not more, when they see their finished arrangement.
My assistants are what I’m most proud of. They’re all extremely hard workers and I think it’s because I’ve Jedi mind tricked them into caring about the product as much as I do. They truly do care for the flowers we get in and some days when I come back with beautiful product, we all stop and stare in awe of what Mother Nature has produced. We have A LOT of impromptu photo opts of our product and arrangements. Some days I know they’re tired, especially after a long weekend of events, and when their work becomes sloppy, I try to motivate them by reiterating the importance of pride in your own work. I think it snaps them out of their funk or they self-correct just to shut me up. We have a lot of fun.
I think when people buy flowers from us, they feel like they’re being taken care of like a friend. We’re very courteous and we’re not afraid to ask them how their day is going or what their plans are after they leave our shop. We try to create a friendly environment so it doesn’t feel like a chore when they come in to buy flowers. I think our customers appreciate it and we enjoy getting to know them. We have people who have purchased flowers from us since our first year and it’s so cool to see how they’ve grown. Whether it be the many girlfriends they’ve have had these pasts few years, kids purchasing their final corsage for their senior prom, or the little ones getting older. It’s really nice to have that connection with the people in our neighborhood and from afar.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
The future is uncertain. I’m getting older now and I’ve yet to start a family. My husband is extremely supportive and patient with me and my business but since I’m a woman in my mid 30’s, time is of the essence. I have plans to fine tune the business but I don’t have any plans to expand it. I like where I’m at. We’re small enough to keep the quality of product at the level I’m happy with and sales are consistent enough to keep us going. Who knows, maybe in a few years, I’ll change my mind. Life is what you make of it and as of now, I’m content with what I’ve made.
Contact Info:
- Address: 18120 Brookhurst Street #53
- Website: www.pinklittleflowershop.com
- Phone: 714-962-5631
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pinkflowershop/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Pink-the-little-flower-shop-128027670567799/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/pink-the-little-flower-shop-fountain-valley
Image Credit:
Brian Leahy Photography (sweetheart table), all other images provided by Hong Nguyen
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
