Thelmz Flower Shop is making receiving flowers in Lagos cool again.
Each day, Isioma Thelma Okonji, the founder of Thelmz Flower Shop, begins her day long before Lagos fully wakes. By 5 a.m., she is up; by 7, her flower studio is already receiving its first orders through WhatsApp, Instagram, and the company’s website. With a commitment to same-day delivery across Lagos, her business caters to everyone wanting to share some love.
In this edition of #MCNWorkLife, Thelma shares how she structured her business and expanded her enterprise. Defined by early starts, long hours, and unwavering attention to detail, she embodies the discipline and vision it takes to build and sustain a modern Lagos floral shop.
What inspired you to start a flower business in Lagos?
I love love, and I love contributing to people’s special day. Recently, flowers have been considered a real gift in Lagos compared to the past, where people didn’t believe that flowers were actual gifts. Many people used to say “Just send money,” but now I send out so many flowers that I know they’re truly being appreciated.
What does a typical day look like for you?
A typical day for me is waking up by 5:00 a.m. and heading to my office by 7 a.m. Then we start taking orders. We accept orders through WhatsApp, Instagram or via our website. We also offer same-day delivery in Lagos, so you can order your flowers now and get them in 2 hours max if you’re in central Lagos. If you’re at the edge of Lagos, you get it within two to three hours. What we’re trying to do is that even if you forget someone’s important day, you can come in order and get it immediately. So, a typical day is selling flowers basically from 7:00 a.m. to sometimes 11:12 p.m.
It’s basically no longer a one-man business. It’s quite a structured business at this point. We have the social media employee, a general manager, a senior florist and a junior florist. So I’m no longer in the day-to-day like that anymore, but I’m still involved. But basically every design goes through my table. I see them and I approve of it.
What’s your favourite flower?
My favourite flower is the Orange Chrysanthemums.
How do you source your flowers, and what challenges come with maintaining quality and freshness?
Flowers are grown in Nigeria, but the challenge is that we don’t have enough farms or strong quality control to serve the entire country. For our store, we import flowers from Europe, South America and a few other African countries.
Our suppliers work with us. If we’re going to get flowers in Nigeria for Friday, they need to leave on Thursday and land at the airport in Nigeria by Friday. We usually clear them through immigration and customs, and then we receive them the same day. All of this takes place within 24 hours — from the farm to the cold room to preserve the flowers’ life. It is a very capital-intensive business because the flowers have to be stored in a cold room and kept at a specific temperature, which is costly.
The flowers in the cold room have to be kept cold 24/7, round the clock. The cold room is always on, so we run a large generator to keep it powered, which consumes a lot of fuel
What is your most successful season?
Valentine’s Day is our most successful season, and it is intense. Valentine’s Day planning officially kicks off in the first week of December, leading to February. That’s when we begin ordering the flowers and sourcing the wraps and packaging.
From February 9 to 14, we usually spend all of these days at work. With hardly any breaks, you get barely two hours of rest per day because of the sheer volume of orders we have to process. I’m talking about 30 to 35 manpower of actual people wrapping and sorting through flowers because we often bring it in a 40 ft container to serve the majority of Lagos.
It is the most intense period of our lives, wrapping and sorting fresh flowers for people. So yes, Valentine’s Day is our biggest period.
What flowers do you recommend for Valentine’s Day?
Red roses; they are always a classic.
Read also: A breath of flowers: The lightest, warmest, and most elegant floral perfumes
Were you expecting the kind of work that you are doing right now when you decided to have a flower shop?
Yes, I expected it to be this busy. I first started selling during the Valentine’s Day season. I had already experienced the rush and the madness and the intensity of it on the very first try. I remember staying up through the night from February 13 to 14. I went on the 13th to sort my own orders. When I got there, I saw the madness that was going on. I was like, “Wow.” I worked straight through the night from the 13th to the 14th, without sleeping, ensuring all my orders were ready and delivered to my customers before 1:00 p.m. It was intense. When I decided to open my store in 2021, I launched it on February 1st, right at the start of Valentine’s Day season, knowing it was going to be busy.
How do you balance working at the flower store and your day-to-day life? How do you deal with burnout?
Sometimes it’s overwhelming. It is not always smooth, especially in a country like Nigeria, where we have power issues. I’ve faced major losses; once, the transformer in our office area malfunctioned, and that very night our generator failed as well. I had just gotten a shipment the day before. The entire shipment of flowers died before we could find a solution to the light issue. I’ve also faced major issues, including the cold room failing a few times due to electrical problems. The government even blocked the road leading to my office for months due to repairs, which caused our sales to dwindle. So, of course, there is the Nigerian factor of trying to run a successful business here.
We’re just grateful that the happy moments are weighing more than the downsides of being here. Of course, Nigeria is happening to us with the number of times the national grid has just crashed, and diesel prices have gone up and also managing staff. But overall, it is an awesome experience because we contribute to people’s day-to-day happiness. We see the love notes that we’re sending out. We know that there is joy when people receive their flowers, and all of that brings me intense satisfaction. Things don’t necessarily balance out, but right now the good side of the business outweighs the bad.
How has the rise of online shopping and social media influenced your sales?
It’s been great because more people are beginning to shop online. I would say that we get 98% of our orders through online shopping, and the rest walk into our shop for orders. We’ve seen an increase in people ordering from TikTok, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and our website.
How do you define success for your business?
To me, success is retaining my customer base. I love when people come back after their first order. Each sale and each purchase is the most important to me; I am very customer-centric. That is how I measure my success when the customers are back over and over again, which also increases the amount of flowers that we’re importing into the country. If we usually handle two imports a month, sometimes we increase to three, as satisfied customers spread the word and encourage more people to buy. When I see customers coming out saying, “Yes, they trust us.” That is success to me.
What is one skill that you have that you feel has helped you navigate your business?
Resilience is one skill I rely on. Because we don’t have the capacity to travel to the countries where we order the flowers, there was a time when they sent bad, old and squished flowers. Resilience also plays a part with everything I mentioned earlier. I’m trying to ensure our cold room remains cold especially with all the issues of providing consistent light in Nigeria. These are things that could have just broken the business, yet we kept pounding the pavement.
Read more: The glam, art and grit behind the brush strokes of film make-up artist Temitope Onayemi
