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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:06] SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Calgary's podcast with Mario Tonoguzzi on Canada's podcast network.
[00:12] SPEAKER_00: Joining me today is Marika Styva who is the owner of Pees Blossoms in Calgary.
[00:18] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today, Marika.
[00:21] SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:23] SPEAKER_00: Well, let's start by just telling me a little bit about Pees Blossoms, what it is and what you do.
[00:30] SPEAKER_01: We're a fabulous, micro-sized little professional florist down in the belt line, where a wild 500 square feet independently owned flowers and really need to low-volt made stuff.
[00:44] SPEAKER_01: So get where and plans and anything that is, I don't know, interesting and textured and inviting.
[00:53] SPEAKER_00: So tell me, I understand there's probably an interesting story behind the name.
[00:59] SPEAKER_00: Tell me where the name originates from.
[01:02] SPEAKER_01: So back in the day with the previous owner, she showed us something that was historic.
[01:07] SPEAKER_01: So Pees Blossoms was the flower fairy from a mid-summer's night stream.
[01:13] SPEAKER_01: And when I started in 2000 working for Teresa, that of course appealed to me because my educational background was English literature.
[01:21] SPEAKER_01: So I was like, well, this is definitely the place for me.
[01:25] SPEAKER_01: So it's one of those things where people like Pees Blossoms and back in the Victorian age, it was a type of flower that's no longer, I guess, recognized.
[01:35] SPEAKER_00: You know, what's interesting, I find it interesting because I live in the Northwest part of Calgary where in Silver Springs.
[01:45] SPEAKER_00: Silver Springs, I don't know if you know, but Silver Springs has a forest and garden areas and one of the areas is a Shakespeare's garden.
[01:55] SPEAKER_01: Oh, I didn't know that.
[01:56] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's going to cool.
[01:58] SPEAKER_00: You walk around and there's and there's a saying from different plays with Shakespeare and I think flowers that are growing there and the plants are growing there all have some Shakespearean connection to them.
[02:15] SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of cool.
[02:16] SPEAKER_01: It's one of the magical things about flowers is they really haven't changed that much over the last few hundred years.
[02:23] SPEAKER_01: So you can actually find that thread of history actually through through plants.
[02:29] SPEAKER_00: So tell me how you got started in this and when.
[02:33] SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a good question.
[02:35] SPEAKER_01: So as a poor university student who was hopeless at serving, I found myself in retail and it got a little boring after a while and a young lady that I worked with winter coat, which was Calgary based company.
[02:51] SPEAKER_01: She came across this ad and she goes, this is for Kensington flowers and she goes, I feel really strongly that you, you're a creative person.
[03:00] SPEAKER_01: And so I did I applied.
[03:03] SPEAKER_01: I wasn't her first choice, but her first choice didn't pan out.
[03:07] SPEAKER_01: So I did get a call and I eventually did end up there and anyone who's been in the flower business for a long time will tell you it's like an addiction.
[03:16] SPEAKER_01: And when you're in it, you almost can't really leave it because it's so different than most jobs.
[03:21] SPEAKER_01: And so I started doing that in university and I graduated and eventually piece blossoms with my girl Friday gig.
[03:30] SPEAKER_01: And I was there every Friday for six years and until I was offered to buy the business from my boss.
[03:36] SPEAKER_01: How long ago was that?
[03:37] SPEAKER_01: I started there in 2000. So this is the longest job I've ever possessed been doing flowers now for 26 years and have owned piece loss since 2006.
[03:50] SPEAKER_00: Okay. So what is the appeal for you?
[03:54] SPEAKER_01: It's very immediate. It's very tactile.
[03:58] SPEAKER_01: There's smell. There's character.
[04:01] SPEAKER_01: If you look at a bucket of flowers, every flower might be seen but different.
[04:05] SPEAKER_01: So it's just this thing where living things are perfectly imperfect.
[04:10] SPEAKER_01: So there's these constant lessons and there's no day that's the same day twice.
[04:14] SPEAKER_01: You get to do different things every day. So it keeps the boredom away.
[04:18] SPEAKER_01: And of course, customer interactions are unlike you would get anywhere else.
[04:23] SPEAKER_01: It's really, really meaningful work.
[04:26] SPEAKER_01: And you know, so at the end of the day, you feel like you've done something, which is a real treat.
[04:32] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, baby flower.
[04:35] SPEAKER_01: I have a list of favorite flowers by season.
[04:37] SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would be foolish of me to say that P&E's aren't a favorite.
[04:44] SPEAKER_01: I was married in June just so I could have P&E's.
[04:47] SPEAKER_01: But every season has the most, you know, it's one of those things where you see a certain flower and you're like, oh, we must be coming up to this season.
[04:56] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there's the two lips that we get from Holland in the winter time and halibor is beautiful.
[05:03] SPEAKER_01: And then you get the fritularia and the scurry in the spring.
[05:07] SPEAKER_01: And then you're like, oh, and a lot of really popular flowers are very fleeting.
[05:11] SPEAKER_01: They're only available for like a handful of weeks, which I think is why P&E's are so special.
[05:16] SPEAKER_01: Right? So I just think I have a favorite for every season. Does that mean?
[05:24] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I totally understand totally understand.
[05:29] SPEAKER_00: As an entrepreneur, you know, tell me a little bit about, I know your journey.
[05:36] SPEAKER_00: You know, obviously, it's not an easy thing, right?
[05:40] SPEAKER_00: Especially in this day and age.
[05:43] SPEAKER_00: What are some of the things that you've learned about being an entrepreneur over that journey of yours?
[05:51] SPEAKER_01: I think that there's been so many lessons. It's a very humbling experience.
[05:57] SPEAKER_01: It's definitely not the line of work for the faint of heart.
[06:01] SPEAKER_01: Flowers are very similar to maybe the restaurant business from the perspective of pear stability.
[06:08] SPEAKER_01: So learning how to gauge your inventory, learning how, you know, when a potato falls on the floor, a chef can turn it into mashed potatoes.
[06:18] SPEAKER_01: When a flower falls on the floor and breaks, it goes right into the compost bin.
[06:22] SPEAKER_01: So it's a little more ruthless that way because there's this aesthetic component to it.
[06:27] SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, you have to, I guess on one hand, see it as something beautiful and artistic because it is,
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: but on the other hand, there is that dimension of, you know, you can't buy 100 of something and have it just go into the compost bin because it's not the favorite flower of the date.
[06:48] SPEAKER_01: And so from a perspective of just even inventory, it's a wild, wild thing.
[06:56] SPEAKER_01: But staffing is probably been one of my most big lessons because a business like flowers has a lot of, I don't know, caches, things that people feel are ideals.
[07:11] SPEAKER_01: And they don't necessarily understand that flowers, the business of flowers is labor intensive and dirty and you ruin all your clothes and, you know, where you don't spend all of your day making beautiful things.
[07:24] SPEAKER_01: You wash a lot of buckets, you water a lot of plants, you know, you do a lot of things.
[07:28] SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of times people come to this business with, I don't know, preconceived notion of like, it's so pretty and it's so lovely.
[07:36] SPEAKER_01: And if I had a quarter for every time I heard that would be, I'd be a millionaire living somewhere in France, not, you know, pushing petals here.
[07:44] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
[07:47] SPEAKER_00: So on that journey, where do you think you learn the most outside of the actual doing it, but there any books or any other entrepreneurs you've learned from?
[08:02] SPEAKER_01: I think that like a lot of other niche businesses, flowers, we have a very tight knit group.
[08:09] SPEAKER_01: Most of us are raised from the beginning and end up owning our own shops.
[08:14] SPEAKER_01: So there's a handful of us.
[08:16] SPEAKER_01: We support each other. We talk to each other.
[08:19] SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are definitely books over the years where you look at old masters and you look at beautiful things and, and you think, well, that would be really lovely.
[08:28] SPEAKER_01: But the day to day stuff is so different. And so in a way, you have to find, you know, the mechanics and then you turn it into your own artistic style, because we're not an F2D shop.
[08:40] SPEAKER_01: We're definitely more of an artistic, I guess, a trades person as opposed to just a retail person.
[08:47] SPEAKER_01: And that makes it interesting, but also more challenging.
[08:52] SPEAKER_01: So on your feet, learn on your feet.
[08:54] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's so true. What about the business at these days? How is the past year or so, you know, with the pandemic impacted what you do and and the business there?
[09:08] SPEAKER_01: It's been really wild. Really. We thought for sure the bottom was going to drop out. The economy was poor before the pandemic.
[09:16] SPEAKER_01: We've been experiencing road work for two years before that. So we had just been recovering from that. And then all of a sudden this happened and we're like, what's going to happen?
[09:26] SPEAKER_01: And then there was some real scary things that happened on the auctions big worldwide flower auctions that hit the news dumpsters being filled with grinding flowers that didn't get moved.
[09:39] SPEAKER_01: And so farmers started panic. And so all of a sudden our food chain for flowers changed very dramatically overnight for us, because we've always supported local and always bought BC.
[09:52] SPEAKER_01: My food chain didn't actually change a whole lot of it at all. So we continue to support the farmers that we had standing orders with. We didn't skip a beat there.
[10:01] SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden the appetite for flowers to communicate to send send something to someone that you couldn't go see.
[10:10] SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden was like we were emissaries for people. And so all of a sudden we're like, wow, this is we're going to do this. And so, you know, it's a really unusual thing to sit here and say that my staff has been fully employed this entire time.
[10:24] SPEAKER_01: There's been no hiccups to being able to support my staff or my growers or customers have supported us. And I feel very fortunate that we've been able to continue on.
[10:36] SPEAKER_01: But also interesting to see how people all of a sudden valued us. And in a poor economy, a lot of people say, oh flowers are the first thing to go.
[10:46] SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden in a time of crisis, we were the one thing that really gave people some comfort and some some happiness. And I've had many customers who like, we look forward to seeing your flowers.
[10:58] SPEAKER_01: The only joy we have in our day. And I was like, how much more satisfaction can you get out of your job when someone tells you that they look forward to those flowers showing up because it's the only bit of color and fun that they have.
[11:11] SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, that's pretty magical.
[11:14] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so true, right? And, you know, when you think about it, I think a lot more people, you know, even beyond flowers, even into the gardening thing.
[11:25] SPEAKER_00: Oh, God, yes.
[11:26] SPEAKER_00: Or into that now, too, right?
[11:29] SPEAKER_00: You know, you got to find, I guess, the things that keep you preoccupied and keep you passionate about things, right?
[11:37] SPEAKER_00: And obviously you do have that passion for flowers. Did you always happen like that?
[11:42] SPEAKER_00: As an end, did you love flowers as a kid?
[11:46] SPEAKER_01: Both my grandmother's were in Vancouver. So I had the French, the French Canadian grandma and the Austrian Ukrainian grandma. And both of them just garden like mad.
[11:55] SPEAKER_01: And I think that when you go and you're from Alberta and you go to Vancouver and you see these walls of blue hide range.
[12:04] SPEAKER_01: And you're like, oh, wow, that's amazing. And every summer trying to bring one home and of course life never surviving.
[12:12] SPEAKER_01: But always thinking, you know, and both of them garden quite differently. And that was really neat because you look forward to visiting each of them.
[12:22] SPEAKER_01: And there's something really grounding and really healing and really wonderful about plants and gardens.
[12:30] SPEAKER_01: And of course anybody who's been to Vancouver goes. This is a good reason to move here.
[12:36] SPEAKER_01: However, we have we have some game here in Alberta. I grow a lot of things here for the shop.
[12:43] SPEAKER_01: And I think that yeah, I think it's genetic maybe or maybe just a recognition of how valuable that is.
[12:50] SPEAKER_01: So do you do a lot of gardening as well?
[12:53] SPEAKER_01: I do what I can. I do a lot of perennials because I don't have a lot of time.
[12:58] SPEAKER_01: I do. But in my early floral career, I was very blessed to work with a fellow named Godwin out of the woods.
[13:06] SPEAKER_01: And he was a retired old college professor who did a test garden and a hobby farm for florists. And he taught me lots and showed me that there was such a variety of things that actually did well here.
[13:18] SPEAKER_01: And when he passed away and the farm wasn't available anymore, I was like, well, I guess the only way I'm going to get these is if I grow them myself.
[13:25] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was thinking when I when you mentioned part Ukrainian background, one of my favorites is poppies, right? And there's a lot of poppies and they grow like crazy.
[13:38] SPEAKER_01: They do, but the variety of them is so wild and we love them for their pods. It sounds odd, but maybe sometimes the poppy pods are just exciting to me is the flower themselves.
[13:50] SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Okay. So being an entrepreneur, obviously, you know, it's almost like 24 or 7 in job.
[13:59] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[14:00] SPEAKER_00: What do you do to, I guess, outside of work? What do you do to be occupied your time or take you away from work?
[14:12] SPEAKER_01: I guess in my mind, it doesn't ever end. It's all interrelated. I do have three kids so that keeps me super busy as well.
[14:22] SPEAKER_01: So this job has offered me a lot of flexibility. It's not a nine to five job. So it does accommodate a variety of things that happened during the day.
[14:34] SPEAKER_01: I love to garden is mentioned. I love to write. I love to draw. I love to sew. I've been sewing since I was six. So that's kind of like my, my quiet happy place, you know, and just being outside.
[14:48] SPEAKER_01: We have a really great inner city yard and pets and, you know, there's there's never a dull moment.
[14:55] SPEAKER_00: So when you look into the future on your business for peace blossoms, yeah, how many thoughts on about growing the business, what you want to do with the business in the future.
[15:09] SPEAKER_01: That's a really good question because of course we're living so day to day now.
[15:14] SPEAKER_01: And we do a farmer's market at the Bears Poff farmers market on Sundays and has kind of carried us through some of the really patchy parts of the economy over the last few years.
[15:26] SPEAKER_01: And it's from so exponentially. And of course we get asked to do markets all the time. So if I was to expand my business, I would do that more so than taking on more of a bricks and mortar space because I feel like that is a culture to itself.
[15:43] SPEAKER_01: And a dimension of interest and it's a really great way to, you know, promote local because that's that's more what I would want to do in a perfect world in a few years.
[15:54] SPEAKER_01: I would happily buy a flower farm or create a flower farm like Buckhead and really kind of promote the notion that we can have our own economy and don't have to rely so heavily on everyone else.
[16:06] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's true right.
[16:08] SPEAKER_00: And when you look at it, are you thinking in Alberta because I know it's a challenge right?
[16:17] SPEAKER_00: Oh, for sure.
[16:18] SPEAKER_00: We're throwing things in Alberta, especially here, you know, we're both in Calgary, but man, oh, man, like, yeah, should I know when to put plants outside, when the, when the seed things, you know, and it is very challenging here.
[16:34] SPEAKER_00: How do you deal with that?
[16:36] SPEAKER_01: It's funny because back in the day when Buck was operating as farm and you would get a call and say, there's going to be a frost. You get out here and you cut everything, you know.
[16:46] SPEAKER_01: And so there was always this like potential of urgency or, you know, if a hail storm came, there was nothing they could do and you just have to rule with it.
[16:55] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that is the debate.
[16:58] SPEAKER_01: There's so much potential in Alberta that's untapped.
[17:01] SPEAKER_01: We have great sun here.
[17:03] SPEAKER_01: We have as much sun in Alberta as California has.
[17:06] SPEAKER_01: We just have it at the wrong time of year.
[17:08] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if ever our province starts looking at things like alternative energy sources, we have amazing geothermal we could be tapping into.
[17:18] SPEAKER_01: That would keep a greenhouse going at a very economical rate.
[17:23] SPEAKER_01: And then you could really do some stuff, right?
[17:26] SPEAKER_01: And, and of course, I was, I myself was born in Vernon.
[17:29] SPEAKER_01: And so every time I go to the Okinaw, and I'm like, yeah, I think I'd be pretty happy here.
[17:34] SPEAKER_01: And given how many of our clients have actually moved out there, Polona, Vernon, you know, through the Okinaw again.
[17:42] SPEAKER_01: We have actually run into our customers out there.
[17:46] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, these things roll around my mind.
[17:49] SPEAKER_01: Is the grass always greener on the other side? Probably not, you know, but there's really beautiful things to be, you know, excited about the landscape here.
[18:00] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, BC is lovely, but it's not everything.
[18:03] SPEAKER_00: So, true. Yeah.
[18:04] SPEAKER_00: All right. Well, thanks very much, Marika, for joining us today.
[18:08] SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
[18:11] SPEAKER_00: All right. That was Marika Styva, who is owner of P's Blossoms in Calgary.
[18:15] SPEAKER_00: This has been Calgary's podcast with Mario Tonogusi on Canada's podcast network. Thanks for joining us.
