The floristry industry has been around for many years, and while there are always changes and innovation in any industry over the years, such as the implementation of online ordering which is now common among florists, a Launceston based florist is now leading the way for the industry, demonstrating small changes that can be made in a bid to be sustainable and ethical in business.
We interviewed Tom Miller, owner and business development manager of Florage Tasmania to find out more.
“We’ve owned the business for just over a year, Florage have been around for quite a while, and since we’ve owned it, we’ve transformed it, I guess, to what it is today.”
“Our main point of difference with the other florists in town is we do take a very eco-friendly approach. So what that means is we source as many of our flowers as we can from local growers, so flowers are getting grown within about [approximately] a 75 kilometre radius of Lonnie.”
“At this time of year, that’s a little bit harder, of course” added Tom, “so we have to get a few through the wholesalers, though we do try to get only flowers from Australia.”
What many might not know as common knowledge, is that a large portion of the flowers sold in Australia are actually grown oversees, and imported in by wholesalers to be distributed to florists around the country at large flower markets.
In addition to supporting local, the team at Florage are also leading the way in environment sustainability.
“We don’t want to send out any single use plastics out into the world”
“Our flowers will only come as a bouquet or in a glass vase. Often you see flowers for sale, they’re wrapped in cellophane plastic, they’ve got a synthetic ribbon tied around them, they have balloons attached, etc. so we don’t do any of that.”
“Our mantra is very much recycle, upcycle, reuse or compost.” Added Tom.
Rather than using plastic cellophane to wrap their flowers, Florage use a mix of recycled brown paper, pieces of hessian and dampened cloth to keep the flowers fresh throughout the delivery process.
As well as flowers, the team also sell hampers filled with local gifts, including Tamar Valley Wine, artisan self-care products, candles, and a range of other hand-picked items. As an extra draw card, they also offer the ability to build your own hamper from the items in-store, and are working to expand this option to their online store.
Tom and Andre, owners of Florage have owned the business for a little over a year now, and are self described as ‘corporate refugees’ having both come from high level careers looking for something different.
“We’ve spent the last 10 years living in Asia in Hong Kong. Very different lives.”
“I was working for an international bank, so corporate banking, and Andre is a designer by trade, so architect, interior designer and had spent 20 odd years working in luxury retail, working for brands like Gucci and Chanel at a fairly senior level.”
“Then we got stuck in Hong Kong with COVID, where it’s all locked down and we couldn’t leave.”
“Obviously it was difficult to get home to our families, etc., so we figured it was time for us to do our own thing, and we landed on florist, really based on Andrew’s creative background and his ability to put together a bunch of flowers.”
“We had the opportunity to purchase a business, as opposed to starting from scratch.”
“So we had a few different places on our hit list, but we were looking at Tasmania, and the first business that that we were really interested in that came up for sale was this one [Florage]”.
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