The flower café
Photo Credit: Lunariaa.Eu
HOW DO YOU TRANSFORM A WILTING FLOWER BOUQUET INTO A FULL-TIME BUSINESS?
The art of swapping fresh flowers for dry flowers to create unique artistic pieces
We’ve all been there. Gifting someone a bouquet or receiving it, thinking how beautiful it is and how sorry we are that it’s going to get tossed away in a couple of days. This is exactly what happened to Olsjana Ajdini, a young CEO of a dried flower art business based in Tirana, Albania.
According to statistics about 60% of all flowers and plants sold globally are purchased as a gift for someone else. But what happens after they have been bought and simply thrown away? Has anyone wondered? Does anyone really care? Well, Olsjana certainly did, in fact, that’s how she got the idea of starting her dry flower business.
With Albania being a fairly new post-communist country in the Balkans, a lot of business opportunities have opened up. However, with these new opportunities, there is also competitiveness and a lack of diversity in the business sector.
Olsjana’s company “Lunariaa.eu” was the first to introduce dried flower art in Albania. So we interviewed her to hear exactly how these pieces are made, how the business came to be and her overall experience as a woman in the business industry.
HOW LUNARIAA.EU STARTED
Left: Pictured a corner of the flower café of Lunariaa Right: Pictured Olsjana with her two kids when first opening the business. (Photo courtesy of Lunariaa.eu)
“I remember composing a bouquet by myself and feeling sad that it would need to be thrown out in 4 days,” she said. “I then saw the flowers I had kept over the years, which my husband had given to me, and that’s when It came to me: Why not open up a business that creates pieces with dry flowers?”
As Olsjana describes herself, she had always been passionate about “beauty and aesthetics in general”. That combined with her desire to bring something unique to the Albanian market which wasn’t seen before gave her the tools to make her business flourish.
No business is ever easy to start, especially when you are a mom and trying to build one in a country where not everything is accessible and costs are high. “It was definitely not easy in the beginning,” she says. “My kids were very young and the materials I needed to create the pieces were not available in Albania. It was hard, but what kept me going was the amazing feedback I was receiving.”
A traditional Albanian costume created with dry flowers from Lunariaa. (Photo courtesy of Lunariaa.eu)
HOW EVERYTHING GETS CREATED
It’s not easy working with dry flowers. The type of flower, colour combination and design of each piece is something Olsjana needs to think about. Sometimes it can take her 5 minutes to create something, other times it takes days. “Catstail Collection is our unique creation which we use to create logos and designs,” Olsjana explains. “Our most recent piece is that of a picture of an Albanian village, which we had to recreate with dried flowers. It was a very hard process as the piece is 140x90 cm, contains 163,500 flowers and it took 787 hours of work.”
Her pieces range in size and creation, from smaller-scale ones to those used for interior design in a big space.
“When I started it was just me and now we are an 11-person staff with one aim: To take Lunariaa international,” she says. “I hope to franchise Flower Café franchise and see my dried flower art in hotels, houses, restaurants etc. I believe every place needs to have flowers incorporated in some way, however, this is just the beginning for both of these desires, there’s more to come.”
Art made with dried flowers (Photo courtesy of Lunariaa.eu)
Finally, when asked about the one piece of advice she would have liked to hear when she first opened Lunariaa, Olsjana immediately answered.
“The technical and artistic part is a quality that everyone should have when opening a business and that varies from person to person,” Olsjana says. “However I would say to all that having someone who knows the inner workings of business management to help you is essential. As for the dry flowers, keep them out of sunlight and moist environments.”