Hume council’s small business grant is helping a local Bulla flower business achieve its goals by growing and expanding its business.
State of Nature Floral Studio’s Lauren Parisi and husband Craig Bruty was awarded $15,000 in December to develop the small flower business.
Ms Parisi said the grant would help the business be more efficient and sustainable and become its own “supply chain”.
“We would be cutting out the middleman, so there’s hopefully some financial dividends there,” she said.
“We really want to create a closed loop system and try and focus on reducing our waste.
“As a point of difference for our business, we think being able to grow our own unique types of flowers is a real lovely selling point for customers as well.”
Ms Parisi said the grant allowed the business, which provided flowers at weddings and other events, to build a garden nearby and run workshops.
“I think it’s a really good initiative from the council to help small businesses advance their business goals,” she said.
“It’s a really hard thing to expand and especially in such a niche sort of area. It gives us the confidence to move forward with it. So that was probably the main thing.
“Part of the goals was to create an aesthetically pleasing space, a beautiful garden essentially, where we could invite clients to and hold our own workshops.”
Ms Parisi said she was glad to be a successful recipient of the grant and looked forward to building a beautiful garden, which is a central part of her business goals.
“It’s obviously a great feeling. It kind of legitimised what we wanted to do and our goals,” she said.
“That helped give us a bit of confidence in what we wanted to do as well.”
Jena Carr
