Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Spencer Hoke
Hi Elizabeth, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Our business is Generations Farm, LLC DBA Generations Floral Company, owned by Elizabeth Spencer Hoke and Brandon Hoke. We started out as Generations Farm in 2013, and we had a small garden where we grew cut flowers that thrived in our zone, so the success rate could be encouraging enough to keep at it. We had jobs, but were able to have a lot of free time (before kids, Ha!) to spend on growing a little hobby farm with cut flowers, bees and chickens. Remembering back, I think our motivation can be summed up by the idea that we could work for ourselves and engage in life in a very meaningful and satisfying way. We did just that, only possible by the support and generosity of our collective families. We live on the same land that Brandon grew up on, which is where the inspiration for the name of our business came from. We kept on working on growing flowers and practicing designing with flowers over the years. This coincided with the explosion of Instagram and being able to search for specific hashtags like #flowerfarming and #floraldesign, whoa my mind was blown and I really started focusing on learning how to design floral arrangements utilizing what we grew and what my family and friends allowed me to cut. I had joined the Master Gardeners and continued learning. I worked from home as a Case Manager and was able to work into a part-time job at The Silos in 2014, an event venue, as an Event Liaison, thinking we would be able to potentially sell flowers to the florists that came our there. We continued growing flowers and putting together arrangements. We set up and sold flowers at a seasonal downtown market and coffee shop and sold evergreen wreaths at Christmas. We had been posting on social media consistently enough that people had started to associate us with flowers. We slowed down on growing flowers with the birth of our first child in 2016, but I continued practicing design skills and I was asked to provide a proposal for wedding at The Silos in 2017 and the couple went with my quote. I did not have the floristry skills to do wedding florals, but I wasn’t afraid to ask for help. I reached out to my earliest flower mentor, Karin Woodward of Seventh Hand Farm in Memphis. She had transitioning from Haute Horticulture (wedding floral design) into Seventh Hand Farm (micro flower farm) and she willingly dropped everything to help me. She helped me order the flowers and welcomed me into her home studio to share with me a tidbit of her acquired knowledge and skills regarding wedding florals. This was a huge transition point for us that truly changed the focus of our business. We did not anticipate this transition, but we were making some money from flowers so we were flexible and flowed with it. The making money part was allowing us to prioritize time with our family. We continued to land more weddings. We purchased a 192sq ft shed for our farm that we finished out and worked out of. We bought a flower cooler. We had changed our name to Generations Floral Company and were specializing in weddings and events. We had one freelance designer that would help me with design work as we grew. By 2019 we were expecting our second child and were no longer growing any flowers. We had built up a solid portfolio of our work and were booking weddings at venues across our region. We were lucky enough to survive Covid shutting down our industry in 2020 and be able to hang on once events started happening again. We have been delicately navigating the insane growth that has happened within our industry due to the lingering effects of Covid. Since 2021, we have seen our annual average number of events more than double, then fall back to normal numbers and seen our average proposal amount increase by 200%. 2024 has had us and many others in the wedding industry extremely nervous. Inflation is everywhere and that combined with lingering economic effects post-Covid has resulted in bookings happening closer to the event date. It has been an interesting few years that has resulted in a tremendous amount of growth for our business. Within the last calendar year, we moved our business from our little finished shed on our property, into the living/dining room/kitchen/den combo of vacant home on the property, and in May of this year into a studio in downtown Jonesboro. Our business transitions have really centered around the growth of our family, and both of our children are now school-age. Having the downtown studio has really helped prepare us for this next phase of growth and we are excited for what the future holds.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We have had our share of struggles, but for the most part it has been smooth sailing. I would say that the majority of our struggles have come in the way of being busier than we could realistically manage. Once we got going with wedding florals and transitioned away from growing flowers and toward growing our family, it was all we could do to just hang on to the reins. We weren’t running the business, it was running us. There was never enough time to learn all the tax and accounting information we should know, and we couldn’t afford to hire anyone to help with that because we were hiring design help. We just stayed perpetually behind trying to get it all done. We were a small enough business that we could manage to get it all done, but just barely. We have spent the last few years reviewing and refining our procedures and processes and getting the business more under control. Now, I can confidently say that we are running the business. Overall, our obstacles and challenges have been few and far between, and I wholeheartedly attribute that to the belief that this was fated. Flowers chose us, and me specifically. Where the business is now is nowhere near what our initial dreams and discussions were, but Brandon’s support never waivered. He is an incredible husband and partner that has made great personal sacrifices for the greater good of our family and our business. No, it has not been easy. Owning/starting a small business is hard and can be very isolating. Having kids is hard and can be very isolating. We did both at kind of the same time, so lots of obstacles, but nothing we haven’t been able to overcome yet!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are a floral design studio that specializes in weddings and events. We love doing larger-scale floral installations and creating an experience for our couples and their guests. We are known locally for our interesting flower choices, our larger-scale arrangements and installations, and our garden-inspired design style. I believe things that I am most proud of for our business are the lessons it is helping us teach our children and the connections it helps foster. They will grow up understanding the value of hard work, the value of a earning a dollar, the value of being able to make a human decision that can benefit another human in a positive way, the value in keeping your word, and the value in clear communication. If we do it right, they will come to understand in time that it is okay to slow down and smell the roses, but you best be organized with the remainder of your time because the next sale is not guaranteed. It is good to have a plan and be able to work out your plan. Having our business makes it easy to share those lessons with them. I am always so proud when fellow wedding vendors hire us for their floral needs or refer us to their clients. That just makes my heart swell because I know that they are well aware of all the options they had for their wedding florals and they chose us or referred us. If I had to verbalize what sets us apart from our competition, I would identify our specialization. We have focused on weddings and events. We have amassed an extensive portfolio of consistent floral design styles that provides immediate trust with our clients. We have a lot of experience and knowledge specific to wedding florals that we share freely with our clients to help guide them in making the absolute most out of their investment. If you choose to invest with us, you are going to feel good about that decision because our passion, our confidence, and our knowledge are going to be on full display for you to take advantage of throughout the entire process.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
My advice for anyone just starting out in floristry is to continue creating and looking for ways to improve your skills. I’ve never worked in a flower shop, so I feel hypocritical saying that a person should go that route. If I were doing it again, I think I would do that. However, I do strongly feel that any skills can be obtained through practice, so get out there and create, regardless of where the creation takes place. If you want to learn how to design with florals, then you will find a way. It is easier now than ever before. There are so many floral design education programs available for purchase online as well as traditional floral design schools. We live in a society where over-sharing is rampant, so I’d bet my last dollar that if a person was motivated enough, they could find enough free resources online to start developing their skills. I would challenge a person to create a weekly or bi-weekly flower budget amount that they were comfortable with and buy flowers from Trader Joe’s/Kroger/Costco/etc and see what all they are able to create. Make something, photograph it, analyze and critique it, take it apart, and repeat that process as many times as the flowers will allow. Take notes about what worked and what didn’t work. Try to find ways to continue developing your skills. Don’t be afraid to invest in yourself and don’t be afraid to fail. It isn’t the failing that is problematic, it is our reaction to the perceived failure that is problematic. For me personally, I wish I knew more about business operation in general when we were starting out.
Pricing:
- We offer semi-custom wedding packages available for studio pickup with a $500 minimum investment.
- We offer custom full-service weddings that include onsite installation with a $3,500 investment for venues within 15 miles of our studio, a $5,000 minimum investment at venues from 16- 30 miles, and a $7,500 minimum investment for venues between 31-60 miles. Anything over 60 miles is a $10,000 minimum investment.
- We offer custom orders with a $300 minimum investment.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.generationsfloralcompany.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/generationsfloralcompany
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/generationsfloralcompany
