Florists had ordered in thousands of dollars worth of stock in time for Valentine’s Day on Sunday before the heartbreaking announcement Victoria was going into a five-day snap lockdown.
Bryant’s Buds business owner Sarah Bryant had planned to have a pop-up shop in Echuca’s main street on Sunday.
“I hired a cool room and had thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stock,” she said.
“Friday afternoon it all turned to shit. I initially had a bit of a meltdown but then I just reached out to the community.
“I put out a post and said ‘please help me sell these flowers’ and from then my website went nuts — I did over 200 orders for the weekend and completely sold out.”
Ms Bryant said about 50 per cent of customers were just pitching in to support a local business, including one anonymous customer who bought 20 bouquets to be split between the Bupa and Glanville Aged Care facilities.
“That made me cry because it was such an amazing thing for someone to spend that much money,” she said.
“To have those kinds of people in our community is so cool. I’m so grateful in our local community everyone rallied around everybody.”
While Moama Echuca Florist is in NSW, potential Echuca customers were under stay-at-home directions, including a 5km radius for travel and only four reasons to leave home.
But this year was no different to others for the florist, with sales quadrupling around Valentine’s Day.
“To lose Valentine’s Day wouldn’t have been great but it wouldn’t have been catastrophic, because the whole lot of us florists have had a wonderful 2020,” owner Kerrie Dean said.
“People called us when they couldn’t travel to NSW to give flowers to their mum or nanas for their birthday so my year has been very good considering so many other businesses weren’t able to trade.”
She thanked the community for their continued support, not just on Valentine’s Day but throughout the pandemic.“We were quite lucky being on this side (of the border),” she said.
However, it wasn't a day to celebrate for Echuca's Riverport Florist, with owner Sarah Colvin estimating business was down 40 per cent on Valentine's Day itself due to having to close the doors to walk-ins.
“Mainly Valentine’s Day is very last minute with guys on the day and we just didn’t have those customers,” she said.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if the lockdown hadn’t continued past Sunday — we’ve got a fair bit of wastage.
“We have to order in advance so we anticipate what it will be and obviously we didn’t get that result so we’ve chucked a fair bit of stuff out. It’s not ideal.”
Now Ms Colvin is just hoping she can return to business as usual on Thursday.
“Valentine’s Day sets us up over the winter months and gets us three or four months of trading all rolled into one day,” she said.
“By not having that big day we’re going to suffer for the next few months.
“If it is only just the five days (lockdown) we can wear it, but the longer it drags out the worse it becomes.”
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