Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel And Lauren (Bridgwood And Anderson).
Rachel and Lauren, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We like to say that Sweet Root Village started with the two of us over a glass of wine trying to turn our creative passions into a full time way of life back in 2010. As one did in that era, we started a blog! Now here we are, 16 years later as a full crew of nine just outside of DC producing nearly 100 events a year in the surrounding areas. After years of growing slowly during the dawn of social media, we had time to refine our processes over the years and the heart of everything we do has been focused around providing excellent quality product, perfecting our logistics to produce large scale events, and to provide a healthy work-life balance for our team!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
A smooth road would have been amazing –– but alas, small business creating and owning is always packed with lessons learned. And those lessons are certainly what has made us better at our jobs! We’ve learned a lot of about trusting our gut and we’ve learned to create purposeful redundancies throughout many areas of our business as a way to catch any issues as the days fly by in this hustle of an industry.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a floral studio that produces mainly weddings and large scale social and corporate events and galas in the DMV and beyond! Flowers are meaningful to us in the way that they can totally transform an event and in the way that they are consistently unique –– We get to create new and interesting designs weekly! Our team is known for being organized and efficient and kind and we take a lot of pride in that! We share a lot of ourselves on social media and what you see is absolutely what you get.
These days, our main services include custom full-scale floral work for weddings and events and we love putting a creative foot forward here and partnering with event planners and designers to bring client visions to life. We also have an a la carte shop called Simply Sweet Root (www.simplysweetroot.com) of pre-designed collections available for purchase with delivery options within 60 miles of Alexandria, Virginia.
And then we also do a lot of training and offer education for just starting or growing floral designers in the area and beyond! We love being able to give back in any way we can!
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
We always tell people to TRY THINGS. Trust your gut and go for things –– because there isn’t much that you can’t come back from or fix or adjust as you learn what works best for you! Yes, hiring that first employee is terrifying. But you can start small! Start with an intern, or a part time seasonal employee and work your way up! You can change your pricing, you can shift your contract as you learn and grow. Life and business if full of pivots!
Then of course the more actionable items like getting deep into tracking your finances from day one. This will serve you in so many ways along the course of your growth. And maybe don’t put off writing down your business plan and your goals, we didn’t get here until nearly year 10 of business and having that frame work to reference as we made choices for the direction of our business would have been really helpful!
Pricing:
- Custom floral work starts with a minimum investment of $10,000, with our average client investing around $30,000 towards floral decor.
- We typically recommend putting aside somewhere between $150-$300 per guest to account for floral coverage throughout all aspects of a wedding!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sweetrootvillage.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sweetrootvillage
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sweetrootvillage
- Other: https://www.simplysweetroot.com
