She sees happiness where others see death and opportunity in the details.
Renton resident LeVinh Tran was able to turn a childhood hobby into a second career, weathering the current economic storm by embracing the beauty of nature.
After the housing market went sour a few years ago, Tran, who’s been a real estate agent for five years, decided to turn back to her roots and do something she watched her father do for years: design floral arrangements.
Now that hobby is a second career for Tran, the owner of Mai Flowers Design in the Highlands, now in its second year.
Today, she designs floral arrangements with a specialization in Asian modern style with a Western influence for all occasions. It is a technique she learned from watching her father style arrangements for church occasions for years. She designed arrangements for her wedding and friends’ weddings over the years, too.
Her shop opened two weeks before Mother’s Day 2009 and at first her early influences shone through her designs.
“So, all the flowers that I designed, it looked like church flowers,” she said. “But as it turned out, lots of people liked it.”
Since then, she’s gone on the create many varied designs for homes, offices and restaurants with no formal training.
As a big supporter of the community, Tran has volunteered her services for charity and fund-raising events for such causes as Art for Autism, the Miss Vietnam Washington, Communities in Schools of Renton and the Asian Counseling and Referral Service.
Her journey to flower shop owner began one day when she saw and opportunity in some information a friend passed on to her. She was visiting the Tea Palace Restaurant in Renton and asked the owner how business was going. She discovered they were booked solid with lots of events and weddings and it clicked that all of those events would also need flowers.
It took her two months to find a space and set up her shop. People called her brave for opening a flower business in the current economy, but she stuck to her instinct.
Flower shops today have to compete with the large floral departments of Safefway, QFC and Costco, she said. Not only that but people are learning how to put together floral arrangements from YouTube.
Still, things seem to work out in Tran’s favor.
Last year, Tran was called into five weddings to help fix the arrangements people tried to do on their own.
Surprisingly, floral arrangements for funerals are her favorite to create, not weddings.
“See the people think that death is the ending of your life, but I believe that death is still going to another place, you know, going to heaven,” she said. “And when I do the flowers and in my feeling I’m still thinking that the person’s still seeing the flowers.”
Tran said with funerals she has more freedom to create her designs when people come to her with the story of their loved one and a few details.
“I do it with all my heart,” she said.
She does her funeral creations late at night and the later she stays up the more beautiful her arrangements become, she said.
But, still things remain difficult for flower shops, having to compete with other larger retailers. Some have not kept up with technology and created web sites and operate based on old business models, Tran said.
Since she’s opened her shop, 10 others have closed in the region, she said.
“I don’t think that I’m special, but I have to try different ways in order to survive,” Tran said.
Throughout it all she remains positive.
“Whatever the economy happens, economy up or down, the people still need flowers,” she said.
MAI FLOWERS DESIGN
WHERE: 3901 N.E. Fourth St. No. 108.
CONTACT: 425-207-8743 or maiflowersdesign@gmail.com
maiflowersdesign.com
