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Extra Features and Video Online FloristsReview.com R E A D O N L I N E 11 E veryone finds their aha moment in unexpected places, and for Brenda LaManna, founder and president of Damselfly Flowers, which is headquartered in White Plains, N.Y., and currently has seven retail "pop-up" stores throughout New York City as well as in Greenwich and Wilton, Conn., it was while reading the book, Borrowing Brilliance: e Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others by David Kord Murray. A talented award-winning florist whose credits include designing the Hamilton-inspired design for the Fleurs de Villes event at NYC's Hudson Yards, LaManna was looking for creative ways to stretch her business in what was clearly becoming a changing environment. After all, supermarkets had been expanding their floral offerings and at discounted prices. e daily grind—and cost— of managing a stand-alone business with rent, utilities, snow removal, etc., were sobering and increasing. LaManna was open to ideas and was seeking solutions. Just like she researched the most prolific blooming rose or interesting parrot tulip, she wanted to dig deeper into her business model. "While reading the book, I learned that so many successful business models were franchise businesses," she states. "Multiple locations were the secret." And from that moment, the seed was planted to develop pop-up flower shops in several locations. Instead of going with the flower truck concept, which many enterprising florists are using, LaManna wanted to find and create "stores within stores." She wasn't going to go to a large chain supermarket. No, LaManna reasoned that it would be better to pursue other similar-sized businesses where they could collectively benefit. While visiting her daughter in Connecticut, she often visited a specialty store called Village Market, in Wilton. Being enterprising, and fueled with the knowledge from this book, she suggested a flower partnership. "We provide a full-service high-end flower shop," she says. "We offer something a supermarket does not: customized handheld bouquets designed with European-quality flowers, with their own packaging containing water, to just pop into a vase. at store has 10,000 people who shop there regularly." It became such a success six years ago that now she has branched out to six other retail locations, including in Grand Central Terminal, in the heart of New York City ; Chelsea Market; Moynihan Train Hall; and Fulton Center. And more are lining up. Customers can also ooh and aah over the unique offerings that LaManna strategically makes sure Trader Joe's doesn't have so that her clients can also "see it, want it, and then we wrap it up." Now, LaManna is quietly but effectively running a major business that is also churning profits and now also comprises Damselfly Designs and Damselfly Direct. With multiple retail locations, the amount of flowers she orders allows her to get better pricing, which then is passed along to customers. Paulino Gaspar's story was very different than LaManna's. Although in his native country of Mexico, he remembers working on his grandfather's farm, coming to the United States, he didn't think of a career in floral design. However, fate had other plans. While bicycling to work, he got hit by a car, putting him in the hospital and rendering him unable to work. To complicate matters, he was the father of a three- year-old daughter, Angelina, and he soon became homeless without steady work. A homeless shelter was not where he wanted to raise his beloved daughter. "It was a tough time, and I was looking for something to do," he remembers. A friend was working at a small flower shop in New York, and Gaspar asked his friend if he could buy some flowers wholesale to resell. He put them in pretty bouquets and literally sold them from a shopping cart that he would wheel around New York City, with his daughter in the front shelf of the cart. As the bouquets sold, Gaspar started saving and saving. Although his "pop-up" may have initially been a shopping cart instead of a truck, a "pop-up" business was born, which he named Angelina's Petals. "[A pop-up] reduces cost," he says. " You don't have to pay By Jill Brooke Damselfly Flowers

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