Just Beginnings Flowers: Celebrating Olympic Victories and Changing Lives
Publish Date: May 2009
The Olympic Games are about rising above adversity, and that goes for both the athletes and the businesses providing services during the Games. A Surrey business owner has taken that message to heart, and will be providing victory bouquets at the 2010 Winter Games that will help transform lives beyond the podium.
June Strandberg, owner of Just Beginnings Flowers, partnered with Margitta Schulz of North Vancouver’s Margitta’s Flowers to win the bid to provide 1500 bouquets for Olympic champions.
The competition was tough – over 50 florists were in the running. But June and her partner had a critical edge. They attended a “Meet the Buyer” session at the 2010 Commerce Centre and learned how to put together a winning combination.
But what makes Just Beginnings Flowers a competitor with a difference is the company’s great story. June Strandberg has put her own values into her business, creating a school of floral design that helps disadvantaged women.
“The single most important factor that secured the contract for us was the idea of the flowers being prepared by marginalized women,” says June discussing why she feels her floral shop was able to win the bid. “The women who will be preparing the flowers were victims of violence, single mothers, ex-prisoners and recovering drug-addicts.”
Just downstairs from her shop at the Phoenix Centre in Surrey, June provides a school for floral design that offers a complete range of training, from basic to advanced specialty courses. The courses are taught by June herself, an award winning floral instructor with over 50 years experience. Courses cover every phase of floristry including care and handling to proper grooming.
“We emphasize the hands on approach where students learn by doing,” says June.
Many women who have gone through her school later found employment at floral shops near their homes. June reflects on one woman who was working with the military and had a hard time integrating into society. She enrolled in one of June’s programs and she is now working in a flower shop where the owner is near retirement, and the woman is thinking about buying the shop. A story like this is what instils June with pride. Last year alone, seven of the women who went through the classroom program found jobs in other floral boutiques.
“Getting business from this opportunity is truly a bonus. Personally, what makes this opportunity so significant is what it will do for the women who will be working on this project.”
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