Good Neighbor Podcast for the Greater Chattanooga Region
Connecting Business Friends to Local Neighbors!
Our goal is to enable business owners and executives such as yourself, who serve Cleveland and the Greater Chattanooga Area, to share your stories and connect with your neighbors residing in the nearby communities. Through the local projects and programs offered from the Friends & Neighbors Group, including The Good Neighbor Podcast, residents are able to learn more about local entrepreneurs and executives including the products and/or services your business offers them
EVERY LOCALLY OWNED BUSINESS HAS A STORY TO TELL...
THE GOOD NEIGHBOR PODCAST HELPS TO TELL YOUR STORY LOUD & PROUD!!
Good Neighbor Podcast for the Greater Chattanooga Region
Liza Greever of Fox and Fern Botanical Styling: From Passionate Hobby to Floral Boutique and Community Impact
What if you could transform your home or business environment with a touch of botanical elegance? This episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast features Liza Greever of Fox and Fern Botanical Styling, a hidden gem in downtown Chattanooga. Liza takes us through her fascinating journey from Maine to Tennessee, sharing how she turned a home studio passion into a full-fledged designer's choice floral boutique. We delve into the various services her shop offers, from wedding arrangements to unique faux designs, and why now is the perfect time to place your Mother's Day orders.
Supporting local talent has never been more crucial. We explore why choosing local florists like Liza, who prioritize creativity and personalized service, trumps the convenience of larger, less personal flower delivery services. Discover the value of seasonal flowers sourced from local farmers, offering not just aesthetic beauty but a fresher, more vibrant product. In this episode, we also tackle the misconceptions about floral design, revealing the hard work and dedication behind each arrangement. Stay tuned to learn how you can nominate your favorite local business for a spotlight on our future episodes, and help us keep the heartbeat of Chattanooga's local economy strong.
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This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Scott Howell.
Speaker 2:Hello good neighbors and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by the Friends and Neighbors Group of Cleveland and the Greater Chattanooga Area. Again, my name is Scott Howell and I'm your host today is Scott Howell and I'm your host today, and for all you first-time listeners out there. The purpose of the Good Neighbor podcast is to bring awareness to the residents of our communities of the locally owned and or operated businesses in Cleveland, chattanooga, dalton, georgia and all the surrounding areas. Small local businesses are the background of our communities and they need our support. Joining me today is our good neighbor, liza Griever at Fox and Fern Botanical Styling. Thank you for being our special guest today with us, liza.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's my pleasure, my pleasure. You know, we want to know a lot more about your business and learn everything we can today, me and all of our listeners too.
Speaker 3:But before we jump into that. Is there anything you'd like to share with us personally, about yourself, your family? Well, I did not grow up in.
Speaker 3:Chattanooga. But my husband did and we decided to pick Chattanooga as our place to raise our child. And we decided to pick Chattanooga as our place to raise our child. So we have a fifth grade son and we have two Boston Terrier dogs who are usually in our flower shop. So if anyone ever wants to come get puppy kisses and hang out with the dogs, they're always in here. But yeah, that's our little family and I love living here.
Speaker 2:I grew up in maine, um, but I love living.
Speaker 3:Chattanooga is my, is my home, so you know maine I've heard how beautiful maine is.
Speaker 2:I've heard about it fall of the year there, of course y'all get a lot of snow. You know the winter time. We some. We don't see much here, but Chattanooga area is a beautiful area. A 10-year-old boy growing up around all these mountains and hiking trails and all these rivers and things to do, it's just a marvelous place to live. The whole Chattanooga area.
Speaker 3:I completely agree, and the people are really great. It's been a really supportive journey. I've felt very welcomed by the community.
Speaker 2:Well, that's wonderful to hear. I know everybody out there will be glad to hear that we have a lot of new people from all over the country. How long have you been here now, Liza?
Speaker 2:14 years 14 years, so you've been here a while so you kind of know what a lot of the people are just moving into the area kind of experiencing when we leave the South and go somewhere else. We call it culture shock, but I guess it's kind of reverse. Reverse culture shock when you come from other areas of the country and come to the south yes yeah, I think it's great, no definitely in a good way, I like it.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about fox and Fern Botanical Styling. So I want you to tell us what you're all about.
Speaker 3:Well, so we started in 2015 and I started doing just weddings and special event floral design out of my home and I had a home studio for about three years and then it really picked up speed and I decided that I wanted to have a storefront and kind of start like a non-traditional flower shop More modern designs and also we don't have like the 1-800-Flowers type of ordering system we have a website and everything that we make is designer's choice.
Speaker 3:And so our clients can, you know, write us a note or call us requesting certain styles or color palettes for their flowers, but, um, or you know different kinds of flowers, but everything that we make is custom okay so it's.
Speaker 3:You know all arrangements. We don't make the same thing twice, so we love to design our floors around you know someone's individual personality and make them feel extra special and kind of pay attention to everything that our clients are asking for and describing so that we can get the order right and, as things have kind of progressed, we still do a lot of events and weddings, but we're also working on we have a plant shop and so we're doing a lot of design of house plants in businesses and homes and we're even kind of branching out to doing like for faux flowers, like silk flower design installations inside businesses or around doors of businesses, and all of that can be seen on our website.
Speaker 2:So those soup flowers are good for us non-green thumb people, right?
Speaker 3:Yes, and we don't typically do like silk flower. We do everything custom for those. So we that's more of like you know, installations in different businesses and you know around decorating their round outside of their door or making something like a fake flower wall inside of their business.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, mother's Day is coming up.
Speaker 3:Y'all have anything available for people that want to get their mother, their wife or some you know special person in their life their wife or some you know special person in their life, absolutely so I will be working on our mother's day page that I'll put up on our website. And we offer delivery. You know, and we go. We can go as far as cleveland. We are downtown on chestnut street.
Speaker 3:We're right in between the reed house and, uh, the westin hotel um yeah, so we're like right in the, in the downtown location, but we can deliver, you know, anywhere and um, we need about like usually a day's notice, uh for, but we do same day delivery. But like we prefer, if you know, get your pre-orders in so we can make sure we can guarantee you know we have the flowers for for everyone I was in was in downtown last week and went to a concert down there last Thursday night and, sure enough, I saw your business right there.
Speaker 2:I pulled off the ramp, was looking right at your business.
Speaker 3:Yes, I know when the Tivoli reopens too. We're so close to the Tivoli, so it's really a wonderful location. I've been very happy. The whole West village neighborhood is. It's a a wonderful location. I've been very happy. The whole West Village neighborhood is a great little neighborhood.
Speaker 2:Well, tell us about your journey, Liza, how this came to be. Were you into floral design when you were in Maine?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did. I worked at a little flower farm and I, you know, kind of just played around with it growing up and then it just kind of spiraled into wanting to do it more often and really wanting to work on it and you know, I had a young child at home. So I just decided, as a stay-at-home mom, I would, you know, play with the idea of having my own design business, and it just grew from there.
Speaker 2:That's great, Congratulations. I love to hear success stories. I love to hear success stories. I guess because I was raised by a single mother. I'm kind of partial to hearing women-owned success stories. I like that.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that. No it really has been. It's been a really wild journey. I mean, I just started it, funding it from my own little savings and and, um, you know there's been like twists and turns. The pandemic was like really hard, but we seem to recover from it and are doing better than ever last year and this year.
Speaker 2:So if you experience any hardships or difficulties, so I guess that would have been one of them, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because there were so many events and weddings that got canceled and had to get rescheduled. So it was just a really chaotic time, but, like we made it through. I have a really wonderful team, too, of people who work for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, they can't beat that. I tell you, good help is hard to find, so if you got some, hang on to them yes, I'm very lucky uh, you know, uh, some of the questions that we're talking I was planning on asking you. We've already kind of, we're already kind of answering them, so let me turn it just to a personal, just for a moment, towards you and your family. So, here you are, in chattanooga, you got this 10 year old son. What do y'all do for fun when you're not working?
Speaker 3:Oh well, my husband is a local musician. He plays a couple bands, so we like to catch, like local music. We like to go out and about. Um, we, my son plays sports, so we're usually I'm a soccer mom or basketball mom. Um, we like to go out. We like to be outside, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I love that.
Speaker 2:Does your husband play with any of the bands that he played with? Do they play to any of the local downtown venues?
Speaker 3:I've interviewed a few of those. Sometimes yeah, Sometimes they play at the Barrel House Ballroom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I interviewed them the other day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they played nightclub, they played all over. But yeah, we really like that live music scene.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, I've got to go there and check them out. They told me I could just sit on the patio with my dog and just enjoy the atmosphere. I'm going to go check it out.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, I love that. I love patio season in Chattanooga. It's the best. Yeah, chattanooga is the best yeah.
Speaker 2:You know you have these custom-made flowers.
Speaker 2:I know you mentioned something I kind of want to capitalize on if you don't care, that you're not connected to the 1-800-FLORIST-type services that are out there, and what that means basically is you go on these 1-800, I'm not trying to call nobody out but these 1-800 websites and you look and you pick out the you know I'm not trying to call them by the app, but these 1-800 websites and you look and you pick out the flyer you want and then the florists that do participate with that it's sent to them and they have to try to make it to look as close as they can to that product and then it gets sent out.
Speaker 2:When you said you're not dealing with that is because, if I understood you correctly, you want everything to be original. You want you want it to be. You said you don't do the same thing twice. So it's not a cookie cutter thing that you do. You want everything to be either from inspired, from the mind of the purchaser or if they tell you hey, this is what I want, this is the color I want. I'm giving you creative freedom to do what you want.
Speaker 3:Yes, that is exactly the way the way the business model is set up. Also, those kind of companies take a lot of money from the local designer.
Speaker 1:that you know, they your site.
Speaker 3:However, they take so much off of it, Then I would rather build an organic customer base and just do it from scratch, even though it's been, you know, challenging at times to be able to train our customers. That you know. If, also, if we're not getting charged those heavy fees, we're going to be able to give them more flowers for the amount of money that they paid.
Speaker 2:So it works for everybody. Yeah Well, you know this podcast is all about focusing on local owned and or operated business, and that's what we're all about, and I don't ever try to disparage anyone and I won't. I won't say this disparaging leader. Maybe there's some florists out there that really need those 1-800 things and if they do, I'm not trying to disparage anyone, but I would like to say this to all of us listeners, and to myself as well, that if we can pick up the phone and call 1-800-whatever and order a flower, and we can pick up the phone and call Liza Griever or whoever you say, well, I want this to go to.
Speaker 2:You know, Podunk, USA, into a town that I don't know anything about. I don't know who the florists are. It's called Google. Right, Google, find the local florist, find their phone number, find their website, order directly from them so they don't have to give up their profits. Like Liza said, they can give you more product because they don't have to give up their profits. Like Liza said, they can give you more product because they don't have to give up their profit. Support local businesses. Let's do all we can to drive the revenue that we spend to the local people so they can grow and prosper. I'm going to tell you what if every local business in Chattanooga disappeared overnight and wasn't there tomorrow? I want you to think about what kind of place this would be. Wouldn't be much left, would it? So all?
Speaker 2:our listeners out there we need to remember these things. Let's call the florist directly and get what we need from them. So Liza offers a beautiful service where she said I'll customize what you want. You just tell me what it is. If you tell me what you want, I'll do it like you want it, but if you give me the creative expression and just tell me what colors you want, I'll make you something beautiful. That's what I'm here, is that right, liza?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, you nailed it, it's perfect. Yeah, I'm really excited to be able to talk about this with you and just let more people run our business and how we make our designs. It's exciting. And also just keeping in mind, too, like using seasonal flowers. You know we try to buy as much as we can from local Chattanooga flower farmers, so you know everything everybody's getting is very fresh.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Yeah, just you know, business owners supporting one another that's what it should be about. I know we have competition, but competition is good overall for everyone because you know it doesn't let people take advantage of us. You know, if there was only one of everything, then we could charge what we wanted, right? So competition is good, but at the same time, just remember to support the local-owned businesses as much as we can. And, liza, one more question before we get into how people can find you If there was one thing that you wish listeners knew about your company that they wouldn't know, if you didn't tell them and you'd like to just shout it from the rooftops, what would it be?
Speaker 3:Well, a lot of people come into the shop and they say, oh, it must be so wonderful to just play with flowers all day. Right, it is, but there's a lot more stress, I think, than people realize. And floral design is, is heavy manual labor. It's really a lot of like physical work and there's a lot, you know, weddings, especially the setup that's involved. I mean I will go 15,000 steps in a day on a wedding setup day easily with, you know, looking at my smart wash at the end of the day and I'm like oh, wow, I didn't know that I went that many steps and it's it's harder work than I think people realize. And also, you know flowers are a luxury item. They are expensive and we don't want them to be that way, necessarily, but that's just. You know. If people knew how much we get charged for the wholesale product.
Speaker 3:I think they would be like oh, okay, I think I understand, and not only that you're talking about buying them from local farmers.
Speaker 2:You know, there's the. Every time the prices of everything go, anything goes up. It goes up to that, every business owner. So that flower, the flower farm, all their expenses go up. Gasoline went up, guess what Theirs did too, all those things. So you know, we need to keep those things in mind to all of our listeners out there. We need to keep those things in mind. You know, not everybody's just trying to get rich off of us. Some of a lot.
Speaker 2:Most business today are just trying to stay afloat and survive because we don't have a profit. There's no profit. Anyone do it, uh, except for unless you're a non-profit organization, obviously, but most of us aren't. We need to make a profit, right? We need somebody to help us. We can pay our, our bills and feed our families as well. So keep that in mind when you're shopping for things. If it's a quality product, just get ready and pay whatever it takes to get you the product that you're going to be happy with. And that's what I'm hearing today. So I was just equally excited to find out about what you did as well, Liza. I'm so glad that you decided to come on the program and talk to us about all this. So how can listeners learn more about you, about what you offer online or offline? How can they contact you?
Speaker 3:So they can Google us Fox and Fern Botanical Styling. Our phone number pops right up. They can call us. Calling and getting our store hours is wonderful If they visit our store in person. At 807 chestnut street there is the city park parking garage and they can. If they can't find a street spot, they can go in the parking garage and for up to 30 minutes it's free, so that's a good resource oh good yeah, so they can come in pick, pick up plants and then hopefully have free parking.
Speaker 3:And then we have a website, wwwfoxandfernstylecom, which you know you can order flowers, get more information, and our Instagram account, Fox and Fern Style, has probably the most updated of all of like what we're working on. I am trying to have our website have even more updates, but it's just hard to to get it all done sometimes. So I would say that the Instagram account has the most updated photos at all times, so our website is also linked to the Instagram account, so people can look, you know, on the website.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, you heard it here Fox and Fern botanical styling. If you're looking for somewhere to go for mother's day, it's a good, good, good option. You're having a wedding contact and find out what they've got available for you. And but always remember, you know, like I say this every time, over and over and over, let's make sure we support these local businesses, you know. So, again, Liza, thanks for being on the program with us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Scott. I really appreciate this opportunity.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's been very informative, very informative. And to all the good neighbors of the Cleveland and the Chattanooga area, after meeting Liza and learning more about Fox and Fern botanical styling, I know that she hopes you'll take a moment and consider all the shares to offer and remember her when you need or want the products and services that they provide. And before ending this episode, I'd like to thank you all, the listeners, for taking time out of your busy day and visiting with us at the Good Neighbor Podcast. Always remember again I say it over and over to support the locally owned and or operated businesses in Cleveland, chattanooga, dalton, the whole Chattanooga area. I wish I had time to just mention every community, because they're all important. So when I say the greater Chattanooga area, it's just part of it. So this is Scott Howell with the Friends and Neighbors Group. Everyone, go out and make this a remarkable day.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPClevelandcom. That's GNPClevelandcom, or call 423-380-1984.
