Nielsen’s Florist stays relevant in a competitive market

Spring came cold and late this year, but Mother”™s Day is May 11 and Nielsen”™s Florist and Garden Shop at 1405 Boston Post Road in Darien on a recent morning was a bloomin”™ hothouse of activity. In an annual cycle that sees the flower business surge (May, June and December) and tail off (January), mom still wins the bouquet.

A week before what she termed “probably the busiest days we have all year,” Sandy Nielsen Baumann, granddaughter to the Danish and Irish immigrants who founded the business 70 years ago, said an additional 10 drivers are needed for Mother”™s Day. They will deliver the Nielsen stock of flowers, decorative plantings and associated products ”” but nothing that requires an excavator to move or plant ”” augmenting the 36 employees already on board with Nielsen”™s. The employee number settles at about 23 full time in the fall.

Given the floral beauty around her, Nielsen Baumann, perhaps curiously, spoke first of the floor beneath her feet.

The flagstone floor was in the original 1944 flower shop, but it is now the floor to the attached restaurant/caterer Michael Joseph”™s, a 25-year-old business owned by family friend and, for the last six years tenant, Joe Viesta.

The floor remains as impeccable as when her grandmother Ellen “Hilda” Slattery Nielsen swept it and ran a business on it alone beginning in 1949, five years after she and her husband had opened the shop and the year of his death. “She was a remarkable woman, really ahead of her time” Nielsen Baumann said. “I can still picture her in here sweeping.”

Hilda”™s son, Jerry, now deceased, later ran the business with his wife, Joanne, who survives him and who still visits. For 10 years, from 1981-1991, Peter Saverine, a non-Nielsen who had worked there as a boy and who still comes in to say hello, ran the store, Nielsen Baumann said.

Besides Sandy, the flowering branches of the family tree involved with the business today include saleswoman and designer Tami Nielsen Whittier; Jerry Nielsen, president of the also-family-owned real estate developer Nielsen Co.; and Karen Nielsen Kuehler ”” “My little sister,” Sandy called her ”” who works part time in sales. The florist footprint is 7,000 square feet and the business is open 363 days a year, closing Christmas and New Year”™s.

“It”™s one of the best one-stop shops you can find,” said Adam Stuart, manager of Michael Joseph”™s retail food operation, noting the synergy of food and flowers.

Nielsen Baumann, too, used the term “one-stop shop.”

Summing up the family”™s adaptive business ethic, she said, “With so many opportunities for shoppers out there, you”™ve got to make it worthwhile to make the extra stop. I think in 1992 there were about 33,000 florists in the country and now there are about 17,000. It”™s the impact of the Internet, big-box stores and supermarkets.”

Adaptations include Christmas trees from North Carolina, wreaths and other December ornaments. Several display cases now hold jewelry. The greenhouse hosts events, including the company”™s recent 70th birthday party.

The big change in flowers is in shipping.

“Logistics have gotten state of the art,” Nielsen Baumann said. “We just came back from visiting our suppliers in Holland. They can cut on Tuesday, have them on a plane on Wednesday and they are in our cooler Wednesday night. Peonies in October? We can get them from the Southern Hemisphere.” Meanwhile, “The trends outside are for container gardens and patio pots.”

What big, impersonal retailers lack ”” the personal touch ”” is evident at Nielsen”™s, where first names rule. “We”™re lucky enough to be in a business that comforts people in sad times and helps them celebrate the great times,” Nielsen Baumann said.

The company was named 2011 Retail Florist of the Year by the national Wholesale Florist and Florist Supplier Association. In 2013, it was named Marketer of the Year by the Society of American Florists.

“In this business, which I suppose is not unique, you have to continually reinvent yourself,” Nielsen Baumann said. “You have to stay relevant. It”™s the name of the game.” That ethos, partly at least, earned the company a Family-Owned Business Award from the Business Journal last year.

All things being relative, the 363-day schedule by family standards is a bit slack. “My grandmother was open Christmas, too,” she said.