Covid and my Ego!

The Covid Pandemic was a real slap in the face for us and a lot of florists! With all of our events canceled it hurt us in unimaginable ways. I haven’t cried over the loss of my store for a second or what could’ve happened or been. You see before this all happened, we were super absorbed in the biz and buzz of the business! Everything seems very peachy on instagram, thats social media for you! But every day in and out I would wake up with a looming heavy burden of anxiety, stress, worry. We were working at crazy speed, you might say a constant adrenaline rush. It was hard for many to keep up with me. I was high all the time, off the energy of my employees, the gorgeous flowers, the back to back meetings, the phones ringing off the hook, and the constant up keeping or keeping up you might say, with my life.

I really didn’t have time to breath and always felt like I was in a constant war with myself and with time. It was like there was never enough hours in the day to finish what I had to get done.

Being a retail storeowner is hard. Everyone warned me about it. It felt like I had no support, everyone told me not to do it. If you know me, you know I am determined. I am strong minded and nothing and no one will get in my way! I was stubborn and fearless and promised myself I will make my dream a reality.

Month in and out, it started getting really hard. I felt I was in constant competition with Trader Joes. All i kept telling myself was, what is the point of keeping this retail space, when most of my work is events, weddings and the like. Here I had this gorgeous space, with an enormous overhead and not enough retail to keep a shop opened in the prime of my city.

Then, the dread of Covid happened! This unknown evil invisible enemy, wasn’t so invisible to us.

One by one, event by event got canceled. March events, gone…April events, gone…. All that revenue gone. It just kept going, all our May, June events started to get canceled and some postponed.

It was like everything I built up over the last 3 years was just flushed down the drain. All the time, investments, financial risk, just gone.

I had to make a hard decision, do I stay in my space, hold off paying rent, but knowing I will need to catch it up sooner or later, or do I break my lease (which my landlord was okay with) and move out?! Generally when the thought of moving out would cross my mind due to the enormous overhead I would shut it out right away! I would tell myself that moving out meant I was a failure, that I wasn’t worthy of being a great florist in LA, that I failed the competition of this heavily saturated market. I wanted to be different, to be unique, to be able to bring my creative visions to life.

However a certain carelessness overtook me. It was as if nothing else in the world mattered. The world was shattering around me. Maybe it was that my best friends husband was on life support fighting for his life with Covid 19. All of a sudden non of my dreams mattered. I knew that no money, no status, no “respect” mattered. My art didn’t matter. All i could pray for was my health, that our families shouldn’t be hurt, that our loved ones and close friends were safe and okay. My little store really didn’t really matter.
It made my decision so easy. It was after a 5 minute conversation with my always logical husband, that we decided we would close our doors to the public and move into storage.

Once I made that decision, I made peace with it right away. No tears, no sweat, we just packed it all up within a matter of 2 days and moved out. I am so blessed to be surrounded by the most supportive team! We did it all like champs, we packed it all up, used the time to organize and make room for our products and created a new workspace that was doable for us during this time.

I know with all my faith that this isn’t the end of our story, and G-d has bigger plans for me. G-d knew that any other way I would’ve continued staying in my store and incurring the insane overhead would financially drain me, and I would still be there because of my image, what would people think, etc. G-d knew I needed this time to bond with my family, my brand new baby, spend time in the walls of my home. To slow down, to breath, to think, to stop and realize: WHAT ARE YOU DOING SIMCHA? WHAT IS IMPORTANT?

I am so humbled and grateful for this experience. I pray that all those that were sick are healed, those that lost a loved one are comforted and those that are in financial strain will make it out on top.

We are thankfully slowly getting back into the events world, with small weddings and parties here and there. I am indebted to the Lark community for keeping us afloat and helping us with your orders! I will always remember this and appreciate it more then you know! I took this time to “pivot” (word of the season) my approach to my hobby turned business, and come up with new innovating ideas and ways to stay relevant! I also used this time to start this blog, something I wanted to do forever. So stay tuned and check in for new blog posts.

Till next time.

XO, Sim