Today we’d like to introduce you to Mike Balsink.
Mike, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Cut Flower Wholesale, Inc. was founded in 1987 right in the middle of midtown in a small basement space around the 10th street area. We grew quickly with our new concept to the wholesale floral industry, quality unique flowers sourced from all over the world combined with speedy delivery and top of the line customer service. We outgrew several buildings over the years and finally landed on 2122 Faulkner Road where we have been here since 1993.
Today, we still continue our same business model with the addition of the modern current tools a visually stimulated company should have. Our newly designed website was just launched in 2017 and includes a floral data base with 8000+ images and now has an on-line shopping capability. We foresee a bright future for a company like us, Atlanta is a fast growing city and has much to offer to businesses and individuals, the event trade and movie industry has contributed to our continued growth, we continually try to stay ahead of change and are always open to new adventures in business.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I would say every business goes through certain challenges, the past economic recessions have affected our sales and I it made some kind of temporary impact on business and growth in general. The positive aspect is that economic downturns forces business owners to look at every aspect of the business it forces to evaluate expenses and to refocus on the business outlook and mission in general. The floral industry also has gone through many changes over the years, in the past retail flower shops dominated the retail floral sales, today the mass marketing retailers have taken a large percentage away from the traditional florists. We have to continually find other flower users besides the traditional flower shops. With the rapid growth of internet marketing and sales flower users have many more choices these days where and how to buy their floral products.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Cut Flower Wholesale, Inc. story. Tell us more about the business.
We make an effort to bring the unusual and the unique floral products from all over the world together in one place. Most markets have many separate importers and wholesalers bringing in product from a certain country or growing area, we however try to bring all of that together in one building where our customers can find everything they need. One of our greatest assets however is our staff, most of our employees have been with the company for over 20 years.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Atlanta was the perfect location to start a floral business back in the early eighties, we just happened to be in the right city at the right time!
Contact Info:
- Address: 2122 Faulkner
Atlanta, GA 30324 - Website: www.cutflower.com
- Phone: 404-320-1619
- Email: mike@cutflower.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/cutfloweratlanta
- Facebook: facebook.com/cutfloweratlanta
- Twitter: twitter.com/cutfloweratl
- Yelp: youtube.com/cutflowertube
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