Exit Interview

1) What is your Essential Question?

How can a fruit and flower shop owner-manager best grow her family business?
ANSWER 1: By organizing in-store operations such as the partnership with 1800Flowers and relationship with employees and drivers.
ANSWER 2: By creating an appealing social media presence to attract customers.
ANSWER 3: Our stores need to be unique by designing new arrangements or product lines.

Best Answer?
The processes that I took to arrive to this answer are working in the store and my research. While doing mentorship, I created my own designs for new floral pieces. The most interesting thing I came across through all my research was when John Brant said “You can’t teach creativity. You can learn how to cut a stem correctly, but that’s not going to make you a good designer.” This quote stays with me to this day because I know exactly what he means. All the employees we hire mean nothing if they are not able to be creative and outside of the box, just because you know the standards of making an arrangement look the same every time does not mean you are a professional floral designer. I started out as the stem-cutter with no idea how to create an arrangement or be creative, but as I researched more about our products I was able to do more than just sit around delegating tasks. I strongly believe that as an owner-manager like John Grant, I would need that creativity to increase our growth rate.
3) What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?

The problems I faced reaching this answer was how to thoroughly explain my combined research and personal experiences in writing. I had a general idea of uniqueness and product lines but wording it out was difficult since I am not the best writer. I resolved this by talking about it with my mentor who in return helped me articulate my speech onto paper.

2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

Making our store unique by designing new arrangements or product lines, I believe this is my best answer because I noticed that in the fruit and flower industry there is a lot of competition and to beat this we have to be innovative. One example is Edible Arrangements, they just announced their Hello Kitty products which is a new and unique product that our store does not provide, we would need to create a better product.

4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
Lisa Gutierrez brought me into the lives of two co-owners of a flower shop, their words and experiences were inspiration.
Professors Keiko Ishihara, Ryo Nakagawa, Shigekazu Ishihara and Mitsuo Nagamachi had research that was simple enough for me to understand the basics of how to create a new floral arrangement.

1. Gutierrez, Lisa. "Business is Blooming: Florists Need Flowers, Creativity--and a Whole Lot of Muscle." Career World, a Weekly Reader Publication, 38.3 (2009): 11-15.
2. Ishihara, Keiko, Ryo Nakagawa, Shigekazu Ishihara, and Mitsuo Nagamachi. "An E-commerce Site for Gift Flower Arrangements That Fit Kansei and Social Manners." The TQM Journal, 20.4 (2008): 338-347.