Cynthia Mufandaedza has opened her own flower and gift shop following the closure of Flowers North last month.
Called Dash Floral Designs and Gifts, her venture is located at 162 Kam Lake Road and opened on Dec. 1.
Mufandaedza is a certified floral designer and event designer. She has been working with florals for a decade as part of her event design business, Dash Event Designs and Rentals.
“Just behind the scenes in that we create most of the floral designs for our events and then we pass the idea to a florist and they execute it for us. (We did not have) the flora inventory to do it ourselves.
“We decided it’s time for us to bring those florals in-house.”
Causing intrigue is the timing of the business opening. Flowers North closed in early November. That business was owned by Stacie Arden Smith — a fellow former city councillor who served alongside Mufandaedza.
Mufandaedza acknowledged the conspicuous timing.
“Yes, there is a connection in that we pretty much bought most of (Flowers North’s) stuff,” she said. “We were fortunate that when Stacie put up her items for sale, we were right on the market looking for coolers and everything.”
She also stated that she is good friends with Arden Smith.
“(I am) so excited that Stacie and I we were able to work together in making this a reality for us.”
Mufandaedza said her vision is for her business to be a one-stop shop for celebrations.
“One of the things that we were thinking about when we came up with the flora shop was, ‘How best can we serve the Yellowknife market?’
“When it’s somebody’s birthday, what do you need to do? You come in, you pick up your flowers, you are able to buy your birthday gift and card. If you need balloons, we are able to (prepare them) in-house.
“We’re offering you that one-stop shop so you’re not trying to drive around town to come up with a birthday gift and everything else.”
She also shared her elation over being able to arrange her flora designs on her own, now that she does not rely on sub-contractors to do it for her.
“Some of the things we’re excited about are the designs that we’ve come up with that really reflect who we are as a designing company. We’re not picking things from, like, magazines. We’re trying to make sure that things are original, things are Northern, and our flora designs are what our clients have always expected from (Dash Event Designs and Rentals).
Though she intends to keep her work original, she also plans to make use of relevant national and international trends in her floral design work.
“One of the things that I was working on was to try to follow Christmas trends in Australia, Japan, Africa, the U.S. as well as in Canada.
“We noticed that in some regard (the flora scene in Yellowknife was) following trends two or three years behind.
“We are bringing you guys the latest trends around the world when it comes to event designing and we’re hoping to do the same thing for florals.”