Today we’d like to introduce you to Lynn Monden and Carly Borowy.
Lynn and Carly, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Our story begins long before Vine & Branches. I was doing freelance floral design for a local shop for many years. In 1986, my friend, Peggy Salas, and I opened Pass Time, Flowers & Gifts. We specialized in silk flower arrangements, Christian gifts, and home decor. Due to some family health problems, we closed the store in 1997.
Fast forward three years to 2000, we opened the doors of Vine & Branches in a historic building in downtown Gainesville. We chose the name of our store based on the verse John 15:5, “I am the Vine, you are the branches.” After a few years, Peggy’s family moved and my daughter, Carly, came to work. Now a mother & daughter team, the feel, and look of Vine & Branches was beginning to change.
As our customers’ needs changed, so did the services we offered. When they needed fresh flowers for their daughter’s wedding or their husbands funeral service, we ordered them in for those special occasions. Now we stock them every day! Girls who first came to us for prom flowers are now coming to us for their weddings. In fact, we just did our first second-generation wedding last year!!
In 2010, we moved into our current building. While it was difficult to leave the old brick charm of the historic building, the parking and storage we gained definitely helped ease the pain. We continue to offer custom silk arrangements, Christian gifts & fresh flowers.
But most of all we offer a smile, a hug and even a couch for customers to grab a minute of peace in the middle of their crazy day!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Nothing is ever easy all the time! Change isn’t always fun, but life is full of it! Over the years, we have had a couple of major bumps in the road.
In 2009, due to lease changes, we lost our downtown building. We weren’t sure where we were going to go, and the one building we were interested in had just been rented to someone else. Luckily we found a home at The Lindsay House, a local gift & frame shop.
It wasn’t easy taking everything from a 1000 sq ft store to three small rooms the size of a Dr’s office exam room! Our customers & friends were our biggest supporters and continued the journey with us. Thankfully we got a wonderful call… the building we originally wanted was now available if we were still interested.
In June of 2010, we moved into our “forever home.” Forever because, as Carly puts it, “we can never move all that stuff again!!” Our next bump came when Carly left to go back to nursing school in 2014. It was a dream she had always had. It was hard taking care of the day to day work in the shop by myself.
Trying to keep the store full of merchandise and keep up with special order was a lot. She came in at night and on weekends to help with special orders and weddings. But being a single mom of four, this made for some really long hours. After 14 months of school and 1 1/2 years working as a nurse full time, she finally came to her senses!
As she tells it, “I didn’t know how much I would miss being at the store! Plus, how else can we take over the world without each other!!!” She came back full time (still working PRN as a nurse) and we have been working together ever since.
Please tell us about the Vine & Branches.
In the shop, our day to day services specializes in custom silk flowers, Christian gifts, and home decor. We design all our wreaths and arrangements and even offer special orders for our customers. We take their ideas, color schemes, and room designs and make a product that fits perfectly! Spreading a little bit of hope, love, and grace is something that is very important to us… that’s where the Christian gifts come in.
We offer wall decor, home accent pieces and even greeting cards with a scripture. Our special services include fresh flowers and weddings. We began both when our customers asked: “Can you do…” Of course, we said YES! How was another question and we figured that out later. Now we offer fresh flowers on a daily basis for everything from birthdays to sympathy flowers.
Locally, we are probably best known for our Christmas Open House that takes place the first weekend of November. We mail (YES, MAIL!!) invites to all the customers on our mailing list. The whole entire store is transformed for Christmas including wreaths & garlands, tree decor, nativities, and gifts. It is amazing to see 250+ walk through our store during this 2-day event. We have customers that have been coming for years.
We even have a trio of sisters that meet there every year to shop and have lunch!! It’s something we all look forward to every year. One of our proudest accomplishments would probably be the growth of our wedding business. Over the past five years, it has just exploded. We were amazed looking back at last year and finding out we had the privilege to be part of 60 weddings!!!
Our first weddings were usually only wedding party flowers. That has now grown into full wedding services including wedding party flowers, ceremony & reception decorating and even day-of coordinating. We have found our niche in the wedding world by offering silk wedding flowers & rentals. Girls can get exactly what they want for flowers and colors using silk and most importantly, they can keep them from now until forever.
Our biggest draw is silk rentals for the ceremony & reception decor. Since renting is so budget friendly, even a bride with a $700 budget can get the wedding she has always dreamed of!! I think our customer service is something that sets us apart. Our focus is our customers, better known to us as our friends and family! They are the reason we do what we do.
We have gone to work at 6 am and stayed till 11 pm to make sure everything is perfect for a bride’s wedding or to finish a casket piece for an unexpected death. We get excited with them over their daughter’s engagement, hold their hand while they try to decide about the flowers for a funeral and even pray with them when they tell us of a bad Dr’s report.
When we were located downtown, across from the courthouse, we had ladies come in on their lunch break “just because it’s so peaceful and I needed a break.” We want each person to leave our store knowing that we care about them and have done the best we can for them!
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Oh my, what a question!!! I would have to say the biggest change is something I have struggled with for a while now… hiring a professional bookkeeper. My previous partner, Peggy, was great with bookkeeping and I was the creative one. It was a win-win situation.
When she left, and Carly came to work full-time, I took over the book work. Since Carly is also creative, she wasn’t much help! She has taken on the wedding work – appointments, proposals, emails, etc… I have finally come to accept the fact that while I can, I just don’t want to!
So I have gladly passed that on to someone else so that I have more time to be creative… especially since creativity is what our customers want! It was totally worth it, and I definitely should have done it sooner!!!
Contact Info:
- Address: 401 N. Grand Gainesville, TX 76240
- Website: www.vineandbranchesgainesville.com
- Phone: 940-612-1829
- Email: [email protected]
- Facebook: Vine and Branches
- Instagram: vineandbranchesgainesville
Image Credit:
Miranda Longoria Photography
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