Flower shop blooms out of home-based business

HOLLAND – Four years after quitting her career in finance to pursue her own greenhouse business, Holland Hill Blooms, Amy Launstein’s home-based business has blossomed, and next week she will be opening her own flower shop.
In addition to selling flowers, shrubs, trees and other plants from her greenhouse on 215th Street in Holland, she will now be selling cut flower arrangements for all occasions, all year round.
“I’ve been asked by a lot of people if I could ever do cut flowers,” Launstein said. “Cut flowers is actually a lot different than having a greenhouse; a lot of people associate the two, but even though they are so different, selling them together seems to mesh really well.”
Launstein said that in fact, her greenhouses will be one thing that make her different than other floral designers, as she plans to use one of them solely for growing flowers for her cut flower arrangements.
“There’s a lot of flowers that florists cant get because they don’t ship well, or because they’re overly expensive, but I can grow all that kind of stuff myself,” she said. “So there will be a lot of different and unusual or seasonal flowers that I can offer that a lot of others cant.”
She said that if her expansion into the floral arranging business goes well, she has more plans in mind.
“If the floral end of it does well there’s a possibility that I’ll open a shop downtown in Grundy Center,” Launstein said. “But we’ve got to see how it goes first.”
For the full story, see the August 25 edition of The Grundy Register.