New business owners find friends in need

[attach]7743[/attach]Diana Rincon and Cesar Arias showed up for work on March 16 to discover the door of their new storefront had been smashed in.

“They took our cash machine and they took the profit of the week,” Rincon exclaimed from the Keewatin Avenue and Yonge
Street shop, Decosense, which opened two months ago.

Although disappointed, Rincon said the support they received from neighbours and members of nearby Castlefield City Church, who stopped in with food and to offer words of encouragement, was uplifting.

“They were so worried about it when they saw all the glass on the floor,” she recalled. “They knew we went through something bad, but they just tried to support us.”

The design services and floral studio offers floral arrangements and plants for events, weddings, everyday life, funerals, corporate functions and homes, as well as interior design, home staging, visual merchandising and furniture design.

Rincon and Arias, who had previously worked together for six years before opening Decosense, have a background in industrial and exhibition design.

After immigrating to Canada four years ago, Rincon went back to school to study floral design.

“We had been thinking about the name for months,” she said. “‘Deco’ means for decoration and ‘sense’ is because you have to work with a lot of feelings here: Sometimes people are so excited for their wedding and other times customers are really sad because of a funeral.”