Meet the Queensland florist that makes fancy flesh flower bouquets...then works her magic to transform them into dainty dried flower ensembles. Helena Rose is a minimal waste florist who is greenifying the flower assembling game by repurposing and reusing petals and stems.
Helena Rose
As a minimal waste florist, Helena Rose has committed to reducing and repurposing floral waste where possible.
Before her love for flower-making and repurposing blossomed, she had a passion for fashion. With an eye for design and an insatiable wanderlust, Helena traveled the world working as a stylist for international fashion journals. Just like fashion and design, minimal waste floristry is an art form.
There’s a lot of time, energy and skill that goes into repurposing flowers from the mixed bouquets you see peeking out from shop windows and road-side collections.
Helena follows an age-old method to make the drying process as seamless as possible and ensure the flowers keep their shape and vibrant hue.
For optimum results, this process must work like clockwork. There’s no room for shipping bottlenecks or clunky unexpected distractions to distract her from giving the flowers her full attention.
That’s where Sendle comes in.
Making business bloom
Being a minimum waste florist means repurposing fresh flowers into beautiful byproducts such as flower wreaths or dry petal confetti. To do this Helena has to sort and separate floral waste into groups based on what flowers can dry naturally, what petals need to be placed in the dehydrator, and what needs to be sent to a botanist for preservation. The drying process can take up to 4 weeks before the fun stuff can begin.
The dried flowers and petals are then used to build arbors, create beautiful window displays, and make confetti and potpourri.
Helena does that on top of fulfilling eCommerce orders, greeting customers in her brick and mortar store, arranging fresh bouquets, designing bespoke headwear, and teaching creative workshops. Running a minimum waste business is no easy feat and for Helena, being busy is an understatement!
Sendle is the time-saving hero she needs to make it all possible.
A lot of people come to Helena Rose for their special day. Many of these ‘special occasion’ customers act with an increased sense of urgency so without streamlined business operations in place, things can get pretty thorny.
To send the online orders of brides-to-be and bridesmaids who have purchased bespoke headpieces and flower crowns for their special day, Helena can quickly log onto the Sendle Dashboard. Here she can arrange a pick up or drop off - depending on her schedule. These deliveries can be scheduled in between serving customers, teaching classes, and beautifying the show-stopping storefront she’s known for.
“The drivers who pick up the packages have also learned who I am and even take note of my trading hours. One driver noticed I usually pack orders by noon and made sure to arrive a little later in the day to ensure a package could be collected that same day instead of having to schedule for next day pickup. That was a really nice experience for me!”
Work overtime? So does Sendle.
For many florists, overtime comes with the territory, particularly around Valentine’s Day, Mother's Day, and Christmas.
For each of these special occasions, Helena creates a themed window display using repurposed or dried flowers plus prepares a bunch of fresh flower bouquets. Each window display can take up to 5 days to build and one bouquet can take between 30 mins to two hours to ensemble.
Helena’s schedule during these periods is unpredictable but being busy is a certain. No two days are the same when you run a florist business and it requires a ton of early mornings and plenty of weekends.
Thankfully Sendle allows for flexibility and can fit into her schedule flawlessly. Helena loves that she is able to drop off her eCommerce parcels at one of Sendle’s drop off points, when and where she likes.
Many of these drop off points are open 24 hours for 7 days a week which means that Helena can still keep her eCommerce customers happy even when her days in the shop are jam-packed.
