Coming up roses, tulips and daisies

[attach]2435[/attach]She’s baaa-aack.

It’s not a nightmare, far from it.

Ni No Wong closed her North Toronto flower shop, [url=http://www.bayviewblossoms.com]Bayview Blossoms[/url], at the end of February.

Eight months later, she has a new store in the same Yonge Street shopping strip where she’s worked for seven of the 15 years she’s been in business.

Wong says she’s happy to be back, but wants people to know she closed her business due to increasing rent.

“It was going up almost $800 a month,” she says her former space on Yonge Street near Lawrence Avenue.

“I left the old place not because I was doing a bad job.”

The Yonge and Lawrence area is an expensive place to do business, she says.

“The rent doesn’t justify the traffic.”

In spite of high operations costs, it was still important for Wong to come back to the neighbourhood, she says — and foot the $3,500 monthly bill for rent. She almost moved to another area with cheaper rents but says she would miss the community and local customers.

“I told myself I have to come back.”

Working from home when she was between retail spaces for those eight months was no big deal, she says. Her first seven years in business were run from her home, after all.

“I knew I’d be okay.”

Keeping the same phone number so clients could still reach her was also part of her strategy. Friends really helped out too, she says. Her supplier even let her use its warehouse to prepare for larger orders.

Not having a storefront was never an option as Wong says she likes the people connection retail offers.

“I miss the community,” she says.

The new store, opening Oct. 8 at 3313 Yonge St. in the former space of Repeats Boutique, will sport a larger fridge for fresh-cut flowers along with a modern glass counter.

Winner of an Ontario Mainstreet Accessibility Award in 2006 for making her old shop accessible for people with disabilities, Wong says it’s in the plans to make the new store equally accessible.

There are a lot of elderly people in the neighbourhood and moms with strollers too, she says.

Business life on the Yonge strip, meanwhile, has continued. Two new florist shops have moved in since she’s left, and while Wong admits it’s a bigger risk to move back now, she says she’s confident.

“I believe in good karma.”

She also counts being positive, having a plan, and always looking for solutions as reasons for her longevity as a business.

“You don’t know what’s going to fall on your head,” she says. “There are always things that happen that you haven’t put in your business plan.”