Flower power

When Bernard Beckles opened La Tropicale, a flower shop on Patna Street, St James, he could count on his fingers the jobs he’d already ditched. He had worked as a housekeeper, a security guard, a sales clerk, an offloader, an encyclopedia salesman, an Amway distributor, and even applied to get a job at the Red House.

Today, as owner and manager of La Tropicale, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, he is constantly in demand both locally and abroad as a consultant, teacher and floral designer. Having failed his GCE examinations at San Juan Senior Comprehensive and lacking money to repeat it, he did not think he was going to amount to much.  He turned to the National Training Agency (NTA) and then went to the Architectural School of Drafting in Toronto and became a trained draftsman. But it wasn’t until he delivered flowers to the Holiday Inn as a favour to a friend that he became acutely aware of the floral business. Beckles took $500, his only savings, to Eden Flower Shop, where he bought the raw materials needed to create eight arrangements, made sandwiches and juice and invited the neighbours. He also sent two complimentary arrangements to nearby schools. His strategy worked. He sold three arrangements to his neighbours and received his first order from an employee at the school. Word spread,  and soon Beckles had steady work for nine months doing wreaths for funerals.

Unfortunately, his new vocation was not well-received by his family who shunned his constant association with funerals. One relative told him that “this was a woman’s field, there was no career in it, it does not pay, you can’t survive off of it.” He shrugged off the criticism. He apprenticed at the Flower Palace on Maraval Road, for three and a half years. When he found out that another flower shop, the R&R Flower Shop, was closing down, he tried salvaging the business — and succeeded. A year and a  half later, in 1988, he accepted an offer to run a flower shop at Kapok Hotel that was on the brink.  He could not afford the rent of $1,000 and made an arrangement with the Bank of Commerce to waive the downpayment and security and give him one month’s grace. His family gave him $500 to get a phone and he opened La Tropicale on a shoestring budget. “I had no money to advertise,” he laments. “I had to depend on word of mouth.” He sent hand written letters to companies, but never got a response. To boost sales, he asked Kapok Hoel to put flowers in the lobby, free of charge and sent a complimentary arrangement to Hilton Hotel. Again his strategy worked. Since his first foray into the business, Beckles has represented TT in floral shows in Sweden, Canada and Martinique and has lectured and demonstrated his techniques in New York, Canada, Barbados, Grenada and St Lucia. He has also ventured into interior decorating and consultations, including planning wedding schemes, Christmas decorations for homes and landscaping. The sets of the television programme Twelve And Under  have been created by Beckles for the last eight years.

The profits fluctuate —  “up and down, up and down,” he said. “It is difficult because you’re dealing with perishable materials and the market is competitive,” says Beckles. He’s also noticed that the perception of flowers has changed, and this has affected profits. They have moved from being a necessity to a luxury item, he says but adds that the orders keep coming in. “Thank God we always have work,” says Beckles. “I get up at six in the morning. I go to sleep focusing on how I will approach the next day. “It is more than just putting flowers in a pot.” says Beckles. “We try not to be stereotypical or a construction line doing the same thing over and over,” he says on La Tropical’s diverse blend of arrangements.  He also underscores the distinction between floral designers and mere florists: the latter may be technically skilled but lack vision of the big picture. His best selling local flowers are anthuriums and orchids while his most popular foreign varieties are roses and Siberian lilies. The influx of customers really cannot be attributed to an aggressive marketing strategy. “We don’t do much advertising,” says Beckles. “We gain customers I would say through word-of-mouth and because of our creativity. The name La Tropicale, too, suggests something extraordinary.”

In the flower business, he thinks a lot of people are in it for the money. “For the first five years I had to depend on sales, and pinch and pinch and save, and teach myself accounts and manage on my own,” says Beckles, who considers himself lucky that things turned out the way they did. Some entrepreneurs become so focussed on the money they’ve been loaned that they never learn how to become self-sufficient, he says. He learned budgeting by drawing upon the experience of seasoned business-people but much of what he knows he had to learn on his own. As for the competition, Beckles says that he is not worried, partly because he believes in customer service and ensuring his clients’ satisfaction. “Many customers come in to look but it all depends on how you approach them. No one comes into our shop without buying something.” He says he will not sell something just to make a buck.  As for expanding his business, he thinks one shop is good enough for now.  His floral arrangements, he adds, are not a one-time deal. In the past he has promised customers that when their flowers have died, they could return the dead arrangement to be redone with fresh flowers —  free of charge.  He continues in this tradition by turning the old arrangement into a beautiful dried product or by explaining to customers how to get cuttings and grow their own plants from the flower stalks. “My hands are always supposed to be dirty, in the mixing and the moulding of everything,” he said, adding,  “customers can tell if you are not involved.”