Local flower farm and
Blooming
Business
I
n the midst of COVID’s economic
hardship, a local farmer and
entrepreneur Emily Copus worked
hard to open a new and innovative
flower shop Carolina Flowers Mercantile
just outside of Asheville.
As a flower farm and shop, Carolina
Flowers offers locally grown farm fresh
flowers for delivery six days a week to
the Asheville area. They also do custom
wedding and event work. Hand-curated
gifts made to supplement the beauty
of the flowers are sold in the Carolina
Flowers Mercantile giftshop.
Copus’s marketing and
communications coordinator, Angeli
Chandler, speaks on the small business’s
experiences through the pandemic.
“Definitely one of the biggest
obstacles we face is just overall
uncertainty, so many things have
changed in the last two years. You know,
everyone’s being told to do one thing
and then having to do another thing.
It’s just constantly changing and you’re
not sure what the next steps are going
to be. We’ve had to be very flexible and
able to pivot… Carolina Flowers, it’s
very steeped in the wedding industry.
So a lot of weddings got canceled and
rescheduled. And so it’s been the ability
to ride that wave and keep everything
going and keep all of our wonderful
brides happy at the same time,” said
Chandler.
Carolina Flowers overcame COVID
obstacles by implementing policies
that value compassion, patience, and
collaboration.
“We’ve definitely just tried to
give people a lot of grace and really
understand that everyone is having
a hard time. A lot of our brides
photo/MADALYNAHMAD/ golden fleece
Graphics & Design | Mady Ahmad
shop perseveres through
the COVID-19 pandemic
photo/MADALYNAHMAD/ golden fleece
rescheduled. And so we sort of lax some
of our policies to let that happen and
make sure that everyone was getting
through together. We also worked really
hard to make sure that everyone stayed
safe by instituting mask policies and
keeping everyone in communication
about what was going on with that,” said
Chandler.
Chandler praises Carolina Flowers’
approach to protecting their employees
health and safety.
“And you know, definitely allowing
people to take time off if they’re sick and
feel comfortable that they could do that
and not be struggling as a result of it. I
think it took a lot of sort of analyzing
the situation and making sure to have
grace in that situation and understand
that everyone is going through the
pandemic, not just us,” said Chandler.
Chandler believes despite having to
handle such strong adversity these past
two years, small businesses can come
out of the pandemic stronger than ever.
“They’ve definitely made us more
resilient if you want to look at it from an
optimistic point of view. We definitely
have been tested and know that we’re
able to really deal with crazy situations
and unknown situations and keep
moving forward and keep doing what by MADALYNAHMAD| Staff Writer
we love doing. I think there are only
really two ways to handle adversity
and it’s either to overcome it and come “Our focus on local makes us special. We’re
out stronger on the other side or to, florists, but we’re also farmers. And so we really
unfortunately, fall victim to it. And so I deeply care about the quality of what we grow and
think we’ve definitely done everything how it relates to the story of where we live and
we can to overcome it,” Chandler said. how it adds to the community in which we live
As a local small business, Carolina and enjoy and love. One of our goals is definitely
Flowers offers unique care to its to get people to love local flowers as much as we
products that customers won’t find do,” Chandler said.
anywhere else. Due to the pandemic, it is important now more
than ever to support small and local businesses.
“I think people should buy from Carolina
Flowers because when you buy from any local
business you’re putting money back into your
community. And because we really care about
what we do and we care about the quality of what
we do and we care about our customers and want
them to be happy. You know, 1-800-FLOWERS
does not care if you like your arrangement. As a
small business, we really genuinely deeply care if
you like what we do. We appreciate your business
so much more than big corporations, and we
turn around and support other local businesses
and that makes everyone stronger. It makes our
community stronger for all of us,” Chandler said.
@GFMEDIAGROUP// June 2022 | 11