Extra Post August- Flower Shop is now complete!

Today I went to visit the shops for the first time after my summer mentorship hours. I never had the opportunity to tell the employees and drivers about my senior project so I was very excited to do so.

Here's the good news. Whenever you start a business, you start small. When the flower shop had its opening in the summer, we shared a facility with a computer repair service,  next to the fruit arrangement shop. Today the owners of the computer repair service moved out. Now we have an entire shop which provides extra room for the growing business.

The sort of bad news: We had a power outage which interferes with orders coming in through the wire. Basically, we receive orders through Bloomnet, a service by 1800flowers for online orders. Fortunately, I took care of the problem by restarting the computer screens, opening our accounts, and printing the orders. We also have a great employee (more like a sister to me), Mariel, who fixed the power outage by herself.

Our family's flower shop is a dream come true. Just imagining how many people receive smiles everyday by such a sweet gesture, is priceless. Plus they smell so wonderful!

P.S. I love to change things up a bit, so I will be changing the flower arrangement on the left side of this blog. All the flower arrangements are the ones we offer through the website.

 

Blog 4: Interview Preparation

1. Who do you plan to interview? Why?

     I plan to interview my mentor, because this will help me get experience being the interviewer since I am comfortable talking to my mentor.

2. What additional questions do you plan to ask? What are open-ended questions?

• Why did you start this fruit arrangement business?
• What were your original plans on a business?
• How did you begin to open this shop?
• How did you market and compete with Edible Arrangements?
• What made you decide to merge with 1800 flowers?

Open-ended questions give the opportunity to have detailed answers instead of just a simple yes or no. This way we have more information from the interviewee.

Blog 3: Topic Choice and Working EQ

1. TOPIC: Small Business Management

2. Question of focus for this month:
     What is the best way to effectively manage and grow a small business such as a fruit and flower shop?

3. WB on right hand side of Blog under 'Project Links'.
     Working Bibliography



Blog 2: Summer Mentorship Component

Literal
1. (Know) Summer Mentorship Log
2. Ibrahim Baggia (562) 746-1874 at Sweet Fruit Arrangements
   
3. (Need to Know) What questions were raised because of the 10 hours of experience?

• Do I really want to do Business as my Senior Project?
• How can I incorporate Robotics into my Senior Project?

Interpretive

4. What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?
 

 The most important thing I gained from this experience is that starting and expanding a business is very difficult and requires patience. Since Sweet Fruit Arrangements is a small business, my mentor has many more responsibilities than a bigger business company. Another important aspect is organization and leadership. I worked with the owner and the manager; I realized that both had to take initiatives and be good leaders in order to have balance with the employees and drivers.

Applied

5. What is your senior project topic going to be?  How did what you did help you choose a topic?  Please explain.

I'm deciding on changing my topic altogether. I want to do the topic: STEM involvement in a Charter School. My new mentor will be Mr. Malara at Rowland Heights Charter School. The reason why I want to change my entire topic is because I want to incorporate Robotics into my Senior Project for both convenience and interest.