Presenting

t's fun as a parent to watch the kids grow up and become adults. For our purposes, it's even more fun when they take over and grow the family flower business—generation after generation after generation. To be in business for more than a century takes a lot of family commitment, hard work, an ever-changing master plan, excellent leadership and a wee bit of luck, quite frankly, combined with growing and adapting alongside the customer base's demands and needs. Founded in 1897, Florists' Review magazine this year celebrates its 125 th anniversary of bringing the floral industry news and stories, trending floral design and helpful business management tips to our loyal readership. To celebrate, we thought it would be fun to chat with a few others in our industry who have maintained family-owned flower businesses for at least a century. While we would love to have included everyone who fits our parameters, space constrictions have limited the depth of our probe, so please forgive us if you are not part of this article. We begin our past, present and future look into the American floral industry with a company whose roots make it the oldest continuously run family-owned floral retail business in the U.S. IMLAY FLORISTS Zanesville, Ohio Founded: 1841 Yup, the oldest family-owned flower shop in the U.S. is Imlay Florists, Inc., of Zanesville, Ohio, currently presided over by Dave Imlay, the fifth generation of Imlay to run the business. Florists' Review attempted to contact Imlay Florists for a more in-depth and personal context on their history and how things have changed and grown for them, but we were unable to connect in time for this article. However, using data compiled from a Y-City News online article from February 2021 that celebrates Imlay's 180th anniversary, as well as an article from five years previous, from the Zanesville Times Recorder, we have gathered the following historical information. "Go west, young man" has long been a uniquely American adage, and one that William Smith Imlay took to heart when, as a 13-year-old in 1834, he drove a team of horses from New Jersey westward to Ohio, which had received its statehood only 33 years previous. For context, when William arrived in New Concord, Ohio was still home to a large Cherokee nation where violence between the two cultures was a common occurrence. By Andrew Joseph Built by Family A CELEBRATORY LOOK AT SOME OF OUR FLORAL INDUSTRY COMPATRIOTS WHO HAVE BEEN IN BUSINESS AS LONG AS—OR LONGER THAN—US. i Business 50 February | 2022

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