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Date: 5/3/2021
HOLYOKE – Residents in Western Massachusetts will soon have a new way to get fresh flowers in their home after a Holyoke business owner announced their plans to launch a mobile flower truck.
Holyoke resident Carla Sampson said she’s been in the floral industry for a long time, having previously owned her own flower shop, and worked creating floral arrangements in the past. She said that was nearly two decades ago though, and her shop closed when life got a little busy. She said in addition to her father passing away, the complex where she was renting space was sold and she became a grandmother all around the same time.
“It put everything on hold, that was probably like 20 years ago. I became a grandmother, I started taking care of him. It got put on the back burner,” she said. “But I always wanted to get back to the flower business.”
She said while she’s always been an avid gardener during her time away from the floral industry, she found herself having quite a bit of free time to fill during the coronavirus pandemic. “This past summer with COVID, I thought it would be a great time to do something,” she said.
When Valentine’s Day came around in February of 2021, Sampson said she wanted to try something new to get back into the floral industry. She said that’s when she had the idea to put together some floral arrangements with items such as chocolate covered strawberries and balloons to see if some local shops would be interested in purchasing them. However, due to the rainy weather forecast she said it didn’t go as planned.
Instead, Sampson said she put her “focus towards the spring” and instead just sold chocolate covered strawberries out of her home. However, she didn’t stop there, and said she continued to think about how she could get back into the industry moving forward. That, she said, is when she started doing research about mobile flower trucks. She said while she’d heard of other businesses having a mobile truck, she didn’t know if anyone would be interested in a mobile flower truck.
“I kept thinking to myself, ‘Am I crazy? Is this something anyone would be interested in?’” she said. “I know of cupcake trucks, but I didn’t know if this would fly.”
Sampson said the more research she did the more excited she became at the possibility of having her own mobile flower truck. “A couple people down South are doing it, it is actually something people seem to like. I got really excited, got more pumped,” she said. “I really started focusing on doing this come spring.”
At the time she spoke to Reminder Publishing, she said she had done all the necessary paperwork, ordered products to hold her floral arrangements such as vases, had reached out to wholesale flower sellers and even reached out to some local farmers. Sampson said her previous experience in the industry was helpful when connecting with wholesalers and she’d gotten “a lot of positive feedback on Facebook” regarding her business, Holly’s Blooming Flower truck named after her a puppy she’d gotten recently.
“I’m the only one in the area doing anything like this. I felt this is great for me, I love the idea of being able to go to some different places, partner up with some businesses [and] partner up with some farmer’s markets,” she said.
She said while the process of opening a mobile flower truck was “not quite as crazy as opening a location where I have to be there all the time,” it had “still been a process trying to figure out who would want me to be out at their shop.”
Sampson said while she would be creating bouquets and arrangements for those celebrating every occasion, she would also allow customers to create their own bouquets. “They’re able to create their own bouquet. They can create their own bouquet, [and] I can wrap it for them. I’m going to have a mason jar if they want to create their own arrangement as well,” she said.
One goal she had for the truck, she explained, was to allow for everyone to access affordable, fresh flowers for their home. “Everything will be priced per stem, so it fits every budget. It’s a great way to bring flowers into your home, most people I know love flowers. It’s a fun and creative way for people to get involved in their own flowers,” she said. “A lot of people go out and buy themselves flowers to make them feel better, they can pick out their own flowers.”
While she said she didn’t have a website just yet, she was hoping to have one “at some point.” In the meantime, she was still reaching out to businesses and organizing where she would host her grand opening for her truck and would post details to her Facebook page, Holly’s Blooming Flower Truck.