Twenty-eight years ago, Kaye said, she walked into several Palmerston North florist shops. By the tenth shop, she had convinced them to take her on. The rest, as they say, is history.
A decade ago, Kaye’s career reached a significant turning point. Her former employer’s decision to sell their business and relocate gave her a unique opportunity to establish her florist shop.
Over the past 10 years, beauKayes Florist has blossomed and grown so much that the store relocated to a bigger premises in May last year.
However, running her own business has not all been sunshine and roses for Kaye. Like many Hawke’s Bay businesses, the florist shop was not immune to the tough times brought by the Covid-19 pandemic, Cyclone Gabrielle and the ups and downs of the cost-of-living crisis.
Kaye said that during Covid “it was challenging like it was for everyone in some way or another, because of all the unknowns”.
Once the shop was able to open for contactless pick-up and deliveries, Kaye and her team found that they got “hammered” with orders from people who wanted to do something for Mother’s Day but still couldn’t freely go out and celebrate.
From a business perspective, Covid was hard, but Kaye said the florist shop kept going and got back on its feet.
As for the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle, which took place on Valentine’s Day 2023, the Taradale florist shop was packed full of orders for arguably one of its biggest days of the year.
“The cyclone was hard because we had a lot of products in the shop ready to go out for Valentine’s Day, so we delivered what we could before it got dangerous,” Kaye said.
For months afterwards, the team worked on re-delivering flowers to those who couldn’t get their Valentine deliveries due to the cyclone. Then, when the shop could, they started getting orders to deliver flowers to people impacted by Gabrielle or who had helped others during and after the cyclone.
Kaye said: “The florist industry is always helping people, so I think we will always be around somehow.”
Helping people and making someone’s day with flowers is one of the shop owner’s favourite parts of being a florist, and she finds it very rewarding.
When asked if beauKayes had another 10 years in it, Kaye said: “I believe so; the lease on our current building is for 12 years.”
As for celebrating a decade in business, Kaye said: “I couldn’t have done it without her team or her husband, who helped keep the business going, and she would be lost without them.”
Maddisyn Jeffares became the editor of the Hawke’s Bay community papers Hastings Leader and Napier Courier in 2023 after writing at the Hastings Leader for almost a year. She has been a reporter with NZME for almost three years and has a strong focus on what’s going on in communities, good and bad, big and small. Email news tips to her at: maddisyn.jeffares@nzme.co.nz.
