This month’s Mayesh Design Star, Akiko Senda, is bringing Tucson to you in a terra cotta pot! In her first video, she demonstrates how to create a potted floral cactus garden. We dove a bit more into her design along with chatting about the challenges of owning a business that does both retail and events, changes she made to make it through a pandemic, her new space, and so much more!
Below are the podcast, video replay, and show notes:
SHOW NOTES
- As you all know, I love when we have “firsts” to talk about! And this is the first time we had a cacti, succulent, flower design. What inspired you to select this design to demonstrate for your first Mayesh Design Star video?
- How would you price this design?
- Are these usually made-to-order, or do you ever make the cactus gardens ahead of time since they last, and then add fresh flowers when customers buy them?
- Even though you typically sell these as retail pieces, have brides ever asked to use them as centerpieces?
- modern love - black cactus -
- What is it like to work in the desert? And how does that compare to when you were in Los Angeles?
- What are some challenges of being both a retail and events florist?
- We will have time to dive more into the event side of the business next month, but since you did a retail design for this month I wanted to ask you how the retail part of your business is structured?
- Like website, POS, marketing, design team, etc
- uses Square for POS and website
- MailChimp for email marketing
- 6 full-time team members
- team of delivery drivers
- What are some changes that you had to make in order to ensure your business’ survival through a pandemic?
- closing retail for 4 months
- I heard you are moving into a new space - congratulations! Tell us more about the move.
- we are upgrading from 600sq ft to 1400+ s
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