I started FLX Flower Preservation on January 1, 2022. I had been playing around with resin and took a couple “orders” in Fall 2021, but hit the ground running at the turn of a new year. With my background in the wedding industry, I knew the people to get in touch with, and I took to social media and Facebook wedding groups to get my name out. Being the first resin flower preservationist in the ROC area, I had dozens and dozens of referrals from florists and planners almost immediately.

Within a few months, I literally went zero to 100. In my first year, I had 120+ clients. And I did it again in 2023.
(FYI - a normal “one person” team/vendor, like a photographer or makeup artist, usually has a MAX of 50 clients a year. Most more like 15-25.)

It was unbelievable! People liked my art and I was honored to be able to say yes to so many people! I took just about every order that came in to save as many flowers as I could. This was supposed to be my “full time gig”, so orders coming in also meant money coming in. Business!!!

But at some point around August 2022… I was not feeling so incredible.

I started drowning. I had so many flowers coming in, I barely even had time to work on the orders I had drying. I was only one person, and all I had was a 100 square foot room (still true, that hasn’t changed). My timelines and expectations were COMPLETELY inaccurate. There was never any ~”scaling”~. I had no idea what the hellll I was doing or what was going on.

My mental health (and even my physical health) TANKED as I was chronically stressed and anxious and freaking out. Because not only did I just take on way too much, not have the space or time, have personal stuff, yada yada… I also knew how special the items I worked with were to clients. There was pressure – not necessarily coming from clients – but in the sense that I knew I couldn’t fuck around. I HAD to take time to make these items as perfect as possible because of how important the flowers were to people. So I did – I took the time. But that backed up my already unrealistic timelines, and I didn’t communicate well as a business owner. So I was letting people down and I was unwell.

And in 2023 it only got worse hahahahhhhhh (laugh so you don’t cry, you know?).

This is NOT a pity party, so I’m not going to say any more. But I’m being (overly) honest to give some context.

Real quick though I do want to clarify: despite my lack of business-owner-skills and my delays… no one’s flowers were effected in terms of quality with the longer turnaround times. Maybe I’m bias, you don’t have to believe me! But I’d like to think that things were still worth the wait.