Local business: Ruby Oak Floristry

Ruby Oak Floristry owners Adele and Christine started the business focused on wedding floristry, before the cancellation and postponement of weddings due to COVID prompted them to pivot into a local flower delivery business.

The demand for fresh and modern floral arrangements was so high, the pair needed to look for a premises, opening up in Fairy Meadow soon after.

These shifts in the business resulted in the Fairy Meadow florist being awarded the Local Business Award for ‘Best Florist in the Illawarra’ in late 2022.

What’s the story behind how the business started and your partnership?

Ruby Oak started in late 2019 as a wedding floristry business. Things were chugging along nicely until COVID hit in 2020, meaning all weddings and events were either cancelled or postponed, leaving us in a position of needing to pivot our business structure to suit the ever changing environment we were living through.

In 2020 and 2021 we saw a huge demand for local flower delivery and people wanting to support small local businesses as best they could through a difficult time.

Our business evolved from wedding floristry to flower delivery from our home studio. We grew to really love this side of floristry and have invested lots of time into creating a flower delivery business that is fresh, modern and exciting using premium flowers (the type you’d see used for weddings) as our point of difference.

An opportunity came up to lease a small shop space on the Princes Highway, Fairy Meadow, and we took on the exciting challenge of transforming an old Chinese takeaway kitchen into a blooming flower shop bursting with colour and life.

In late 2022 we were honoured to take home the Local Business Award for ‘Best Florist in the Illawarra’. We were so pleasantly surprised by this amazing achievement and have the community to thank. We are so proud of what we have created and invite everyone to come and see the space for themselves.

What’s your background and has that involved floristry?

We trained in floristry at Pearsons in Sydney in 2019, which cemented a love for flower arranging and, generally, all aspects of floristry.

Where did your passion stem from?

I’ve always loved working with people and customer service, yet knew I wanted to do something creative. By no means is being in the floral industry easy. It’s a lot of physical work and long hours. But being surrounded by beautiful flowers every day, and being able to use my creativity, floristry was the perfect career change.

What do you like about working in Fairy Meadow?

Fairy Meadow is a beautiful place to live and work. We are in a great, central location and find there is such a nice sense of community with a mixed demographic of young families and older generations who have lived in the area for 30-40 years. Every day we meet really wonderful people with interesting stories. We are always here for a chat.

Fairy Meadow is continually changing and becoming a hub for interesting and exciting businesses and places to dine.

The warm welcome from the Fairy Meadow community over the past year has been so wonderful. We love that we can bring a fresh, modern style of floristry to this bustling community.

Where do you source your products from and how did that develop for you?

We source all of our fresh flowers from the Sydney Flower Market. We visit these markets every two days (Monday, Wednesday and Friday), to pick up the freshest and best florals for our customers.

Over time, we have developed relationships with growers, allowing us to source the very best florals available. Often, the flower types we are pre-ordering don’t even make it to the market floor before they’re snapped up by us and other florists.

What are the most popular items you sell? Does that change throughout the seasons?

We have an expansive variety of fresh flower bouquets, dried flowers, giftware, candles and homewares. However, our most popular products are definitely our ‘Pop of Colour’ and ‘Blush Garden’ bouquets.

What sort of occasions do people tend to purchase flowers for? Has that changed over time?

We send flowers across the Illawarra every day for a variety of occasions, most commonly birthdays, anniversaries and sympathy. However, people are still celebrating milestones via flower delivery for newborn babies, graduations, thank yous and many other reasons.

Flowers really are such a great way to show your appreciation and/or love to anyone in your life.

To learn more about buying, selling or leasing a property in Fairy Meadow and surrounds, contact Joanne on (02) 4285 7400.

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