Flowering in business
How Anna’s florist shop has bloomed
TODAY is the busiest day of the year for Anna Jenkins whose Silky Bouquets business moves up a gear every Valentine’s Day.
As founder of the florist based in Widnes, Cheshire, Anna, 30, has been working round the clock during the past fortnight to produce silk and real flower arrangements.
I’m not, actually. I launched the business with a good idea and although I have since learnt all about floristry and make up bouquets all the time, I tend to handle the business side of online orders and the shop. I started it back in 2011 after I graduated in textiles design and design management. I couldn’t find a job for love nor money. They all wanted experience and the only way it seemed to get experience was to accept unpaid internships – I just couldn’t do that.
I had worked through university parttime as a receptionist at a gym and carried on doing that to make ends meet. My boyfriend’s mum, Linda Hale, was a florist and had just made a silk tribute for a relative who had died. I wanted to do something similar but couldn’t find anyone who offered these.
I realised I had spotted a gap in the market. With Linda making the tributes I started selling them on eBay – perhaps four or five a week. I also signed up to the Prince’s Trust which helped me with a business plan and a mentor.
We discovered really quickly that although it was meant to be all about silk tributes, when people saw how Valentine’s is the peak time for Anna
beautiful silk flowers are these days, they wanted them for weddings, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s and general gifts. It snowballed rapidly. Today we get 400 to 500 orders a week. Linda taught me how to make the bouquets and we used her garage for everything – production, packaging and admin.
We outgrew it in 2016 and two years ago, in the run-up to Valentine’s, we opened the shop. It was in at the deep end. Once we had that, we could also have a range of real flowers too, which was a steep learning curve in ordering the right amounts of stock.
We now have six members of staff keeping up with orders and I recently made Linda a partner. When it comes to funeral tributes anything with a lily is popular. For all other occasions it is definitely roses. I don’t have a particular favourite though. My home is full of various displays. I work all the time. I have another business, Sophia Vincent, which I set up on my own in 2017 to do bridal bouquets, weddings, design and gifts. I always dreamt of having a design business and even knew the name years ago when I was still studying at Manchester University. It is my middle name and my grandad’s. I spend my evenings and weekends doing that, but it doesn’t feel like work because I love it so much.
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■ Silky Bouquets – silkybouquets.com ■ Sophia Vincent – sophiavincent.com ■ eBay – ebay.co.uk
■ Prince’s Trust – princes-trust.org.uk
Stock ordering was a real learning curve