Blooming Business

● Local flower farm and shop perseveres through the COVID-19 pandemic

In 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 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 we love doing.
I think there are only really two ways to handle adversity and it's either to overcome it and come
out stronger on the other side or to, unfortunately, fall victim to it. And so I think we've definitely
done everything we can to overcome it,” Chandler said.
 As a local small business, Carolina Flowers offers unique care to its products that
customers won’t find anywhere else.
“Our focus on local makes us special. We're florists, but we're also farmers. And so we
really deeply care about the quality of what we grow and how it relates to the story of where we
live and how it adds to the community in which we live and enjoy and love. One of our goals is
definitely to get people to love local flowers as much as we do,” Chandler said.
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.