Napier florist beauKayes is celebrating 10 years in business

After almost 30 years in the florist industry, Kaye van Booma, owner of beauKayes florist in Taradale, is celebrating 10 years of having her own shop.

Kaye said she had always loved nature and was the child who picked the daisies and played with the little creatures in the garden.

At the age of 13, Kaye started working in a garden center, which is where she believed her love of plants and nature came from.

During her school years she did an internship at a flower shop and from that moment she knew that this was the profession she wanted.

Twenty-eight years ago, Kaye said, she walked into several florist shops in Palmerston North. By the tenth store, she had convinced them to hire her. The rest, as they say, is history.

Ten years ago, Kaye’s career reached a major turning point. Her former employer’s decision to sell the business and move gave her a unique opportunity to set up her flower shop.

Over the past 10 years, beauKayes Florist has grown and grown so much that the store moved to a larger building in May last year.

Running her own business wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for Kaye, however. Like many Hawke’s Bay businesses, the flower shop has not been immune to the tough times brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, Cyclone Gabrielle and the ups and downs of the cost of living.

Kaye said that during Covid, “like it has been challenging for everyone in some way or another, because of all the unknowns”.

Once the store was able to open for contactless pickup and delivery, Kaye and her team found they were “inundated” with orders from people who wanted to do something for Mother’s Day but still couldn’t freely go out to celebrate.

From a business perspective, Covid hit it hard, but Kaye said the flower shop kept going and got back on its feet.

In terms of the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle, which occurred on Valentine’s Day 2023, Taradale’s flower shop was packed with orders for perhaps one of the biggest days of the year.

“The cyclone was tough because we had a lot of products in the store ready to be sold on Valentine’s Day, so we delivered what we could before it became dangerous,” Kaye said.

For months afterward, the team worked to redeliver flowers to those who were unable to get their Valentine’s Day delivery due to the cyclone. When the store was able to do that, they then started receiving orders to deliver flowers to people affected by Gabrielle or who had helped others during and after the cyclone.

Kaye said: “The florist industry is always helping people, so I think we will always be there in some way.”

Helping people and brightening someone’s day with flowers is one of the shop owner’s favorite parts of being a florist, and she finds it very rewarding.

When asked if beauKayes will last another decade, Kaye said, “I believe so; The lease for our current building is for twelve years.”

On celebrating her tenth anniversary as an entrepreneur, Kaye said: “I couldn’t have done this without her team or her husband, who helped keep the business going, and without them she would be lost.”

Maddisyn Jeffares became the editor of Hawke’s Bay community newspapers Hastings leader And Napier courier in 2023 after writing at the Hastings leader for almost a year. She has been a reporter at NZME for almost three years and has a strong focus on what’s going on in communities, good and bad, big and small. Email news tips to her at: [email protected].