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Gainesville sisters build budding flower business
Women use floral arrangements as an outlet for their creativity
Sisters CJ Greene, left, and Leigh Justice arrange a selection of white roses and purple dahlias Thursday afternoon for their business Friday's Flowers. The two women, who live next to each other, started Friday's Flowers as an outlet for their creativity.
Friday's Flowers
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Fridays-Flowers-Gainesville-1241154349245771/?fref=ts
Instagram: fridaysflowersgainesville
Friday's Flowers is an outlet for creativity for owners and sisters CJ Greene and Leigh Justice.
Both women are moms who work full time. Greene, 32, is a Realtor and Justice, 34, is a landscape architect. But both women missed being creative. Luckily, they turned to an activity of their mother's — floral arrangements — as an outlet for their imaginative minds.
"We grew up around my mom and her best friends (who) always did flowers," Greene said.
The Gainesville natives explained their mother, Ann Bachman, and her friends helped each other out with styling weddings.
"We thought it would be fun to get together and have coffee and make a few arrangements every week," Greene said. "And if people would buy them, it would be great."
So a few weeks before Valentine's Day in February, Friday's Flowers sprouted.
Every Thursday the women get together to design floral arrangements. They live next door to each other — which they say is a lot of fun — making the weekly meetings easy.
They then post the photos on social media, such as Instagram and Facebook, and people "claim" them — indicating they wanted to purchase them.
Since then the business has turned into other opportunities. The women have crafted floral arrangements for company parties, rehearsal dinners, weddings, birthdays and funerals.
"We have kind of gained some other jobs outside of Friday's bunch of flowers," Justice said.
After the flowers are "claimed" online by the purchaser, customers pick up the arrangements from Greene's porch.
Sometimes the sisters receive unique requests such as one for Olympic-themed flowers for an Olympic-themed party last week.
"People just trust us and our creativity to come up with something fun every week and like in the text say 'whatever you come up with it will be great,'" Justice said.
They said they learned about arrangement from her mother and her friends, Betsy Wisehart and Neal Hughs. Now their children, nine kids between the two of them, experience the same thing.
"I think it's good for our kids to see us work, and good for them to contribute and for them to come out and help and watch and be a part of it," Justice said.
Sometimes the children help out, sometimes with cleanup, sometimes they use old flowers being thrown out by the wholesaler to create their own arrangements.
Greene admits it's easier to design the arrangements during the school year when the kids are in class, and said they took a few breaks over the summer.
The pair also works well together as both are creative and involved in the floral arrangement process.
"CJ is really social, she has lots of good connections and is real good with posting things and keeping up with people," Justice said. "I kind of do the organized portion, the counting flowers, the orders, things like that. She keeps me kind of foot-loose and fancy-free and I kind of keep track of things."
Typically the pair makes about eight to 10 arrangements per week and sells them via social media. The week of Valentine's Day, however, they made and sold close to 30 arrangements. It required the women to visit their flower supplier twice that week.
The flowers sold on Friday's all have the same price point of $35. Custom orders for special occasions are priced depending on what's requested.
For special occasions Greene and Justice try to meet their customer's needs, even if it's not always on a Thursday or Friday.
"I guess we don't know what to do if life isn't just crazy and busy," Justice said.
Gaining the support of the community has been encouraging and positive, Greene and Justice said.
"I've really enjoyed people coming to us and asking for us to help with things that are important to them," Justice said.