Interview with Entrepreness Kim Foren of Geranium Lake Flowers

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May 7, 2010 by Katelin | Comments (0)

As Etta James’ At Last, serenades visitors of the Geranium Lake website, we can’t help but notice how well the song represents the sentiments of so many of Kim Foren’s clients. Trapped in the undertaking of planning their own events before finally finding Geranium Lake, the words “my lonely days are over, and life is like a song” never seemed so fitting. Persons planning parties of all kinds flock to the capable hands of Kim, finding the unique artistic vision that has made her floral boutique famous. Kim’s floral and event styling techniques are constantly evolving, maintaining a fresh edge, and chic sensibility. Drawing inspiration from all corners of the globe, Kim provides the ever-important details that make both big and small events memorable for a lifetime.

Kim, you’ve done everything from painting professionally, to working in the corporate world. Tell us a little about your path to opening Geranium Lake Flowers.
I am a painter, and I went to the Pacific Northwest College of Arts. One day I decided to quit my job (which was a corporate buyer for a chain of frame shops). I sold my BMW, bought a van for $600 and started selling flowers out of it. My mom had gone to flower school so I grabbed her notebooks and looked at them, and decided I didn’t need them. I wanted to make my flower shop a little more artistic. I named the shop Geranium Lake Flowers because Geranium Lake is a hot pink Winsor & Newton color of paint, and that was a reminder to keep my flower shop creative. And from there I ended up in the U.S. Bank Tower where I had a little flower stand, and I’ve been here ever since. I’ve been really super lucky. I have a lot of high profile clients, everybody is looking for something a little more fresh and a little bit more interesting and creative. My job before as a corporate art buyer was for an antique importer. I got to go to Holland and England a lot, and I kept seeing all of these flowers in all of the European homes, especially in Holland. So I kind of styled my flower shop after those gorgeous inexpensive flowers that were everywhere. From there my specialty has become weddings and events. I just like he drama of it all. I love people and I love the whole wedding and bride thing.

What role do you play in planning events?
The development over the last five years is that people are busy and they want everything in one place. They want someone who can pull all the pieces together. So you can call it a creative director, or stylist, or a ‘table scaper’…there’s all these crazy names. But basically I just tell people that I’m the girl that makes everything look good. Sometimes I’ll help with the actual flow of the event. Mostly I help with all the pieces. Making sure the color palette and choices are right for the feeling you’re going for. Whether you want a plated dinner, or cocktail party, etc…just kind of managing the general look and feel because there’s so many little decisions that if you didn’t have any experience, you would never know they can influence so much. A lot of customers want this casual, kind of fun, but a little elegant feel. So we do place cards, linens, and lighting, and table numbers, and sometimes we help with music and bridesmaids dresses. You name it. The only thing I really don’t do is the food. But I’ll do the cake. They want a general contractor with a twist, and that’s me.

What is your favorite type of event to coordinate?
I like anything with a lot of content. Where there’s a message, and you can feel really connected to what you’re experiencing. That can be small weddings or big weddings, I also do all of charity events. One big event is the Classic Wine Auction, it’s a huge party for 800 people. I like that because the scale is so dramatic, but the message is so meaningful and intimate. Taking care of special risk kids, or homeless kids, kids with cancer. I just love that one. It’s also at the Convention Center which is this generic, vanilla shell, so it’s always challenging from my point of view to create that intimacy on a large scale.

You’ve been dubbed the ‘Martha Stewart with an Edge’. Do you think you fit the bill?
That was said a long time ago by an Oregonian columnist. Yea, I think you could say that. I don’t have a big ego, I’m super hyper creative, and I’ll just take care of you. So I guess if you describe it like that then, then sure. I would say I have kind of a lifestyle look and feel, and I’m interested in the whole process and the whole event, and it would be cool to have my own TV show, and books, and that would be the direction I want to go eventually. I’m more like a nice Martha Stewart. Some of her projects are very overwhelming and over the top, so I think I make it more accessible.

Your blog is chocked full of great do-it-yourself ideas, how do you come up with them? Is it all about experimentation?
Yea, I’m always looking at things, other blogs, reading different books. If you just look at the world with your eyes open, you find inspiration. I’m just always working I guess you could say, and trying to get inspiration. I just got back from San Francisco the day before last, and at the flower market there was this ‘mountain man’ and he had a giant log that was filled with lichen and it looked like something he had just gotten out of the back of his pickup. He said that I was the only person that had looked at it all day long, and I HAD to have it because I had this vision of laying it on the table and filling it with succulents and ferns and having some kind of forest fairy dinner. So I guess I’m just always looking and trying to figure out what’s inspiring. If you live your life like that, then you see possibilities in everything.

Do you have a favorite flower to work with?
Personally, I’m a fan of old fashioned flowers, lilies of the valley, lilacs, peonies, those kinds of things. I always say that they have a lot of ‘flower baggage’. Most people have that flower that touches a nerve, because they have some emotional baggage with it. I guess I’m just inspired by everything really, so I don’t really have a favorite because I can make something out of nothing, or something out of something. Carnations are definitely not my favorite. But there all of these old fashioned versions that smell like cinnamon and cloves and when you get a hundred of them and pack them tight in a cube or a bowl, they’re magical.

Whenever I get flowers, they seem to wilt quickly. What’s the best way to care for flowers or dry bouquets?
To make them last, always make sure the water is clear. That means that sometimes you would change the water every other day. There are also lots of things that you can put in the water to make them last longer, and if they last longer then they dry better. Some people put pennies in water for tulips, or SevenUp, or things that have acid in them, or you can use flower food. My favorite is Viagra. There are all of these studies about how Viagra-like substances are being used for third world farming. It opens up the pores and lets the water absorb more efficiently. One of my brides was in pharmaceutical sales, and she stared telling me about it. So I started doing research, and I tried it first in Christmas trees at the Benson and it worked beautifully. But it’s kind of expensive for a flower shop to buy Viagra…

As far as drying flowers, you can turn them upside down in a cool, dry place like a basement. You just want to make sure it doesn’t mildew, and turning it upside down will give it a nice shape. If you’re super crafty, go to Michaels and buy silica (that’s the stuff that’s in your tennis shoes to dry them out). Lay your flowers in a low sealed container, layering flowers and silica, flowers and silica, and then cover the whole thing. They’ll dry out perfectly and hold their color, depending on the flower within a week to ten days. The best flower for dying is a hydrangea, it looks amazing, holds its color, doesn’t shed, and the scale of it is so beautiful and big.

There’s lot of cool things you can make that aren’t flowers, beaded flowers, flowers out of old antique ribbon are cool. I really want to go to Thailand. That’s my current thing. They make these elaborate leis, offerings to Buddha. They’re these round, kind of textured, cool, floral garlands made by dissecting and wiring different parts of the flowers together.

You’re widely known for putting a fresh edge on floral arrangements, do you consider your international experiences your secret weapons to success?
Yes, there are big communities of florists all over the world, and about three years ago, I was feeling kind of uninspired by the American floral community, so I joined this international group called Pandora’s Box. They’re visual artists, florists, and most are Spanish, French, and Italian. I met them all in Sardinia, Italy, where they hired flower gurus, met for a week in a hotel, and made all kinds of stuff. That was completely inspiring because most of the florists there are small and they don’t have much work. They’re kind of like studio artists and their medium is flowers. They really made me look outside the box and realize how much business we have here and how much I have personally, and be thankful for that. And maybe take advantage of it while I have this big audience, because their shops and studios are tiny, and they might make one arrangement per day and that’s it. They look at floral material as a necessity, like you have to have food, your phone, and flowers. So it’s serious business, but you also have to have the artistic side of it. This year, they’ve hired a visual artist, who’s a sculptor, kind of like Andy Goldsworthy. He’s British, and he goes into the wild and makes art out of natural material, that will decompose in something like twelve hours. Anyways, this year we’re meeting in the outskirts of Poland and doing kind of land/flowers/art. Going out to the woods and making crazy sculptures! Doing things like that really gets me outside of the box.

Geranium Lake is a member of the Style Me Pretty Little Black Book, what’s that all about?
It’s a resource for florists and all kinds of vendors in each community. They have a resource guide for fun, hipster, more evolved florists and vendors in each city. We submit photos, and participate in their blog a lot. Those guys really have it going on. They’re probably one of the most well trafficked blogs on weddings besides The Knot. So it’s just a really fancy resource guide that’s beautiful and gorgeous. They have a really good style about them, and everything they do is pretty interesting. It really sucks you in.

Say I’m throwing a springtime bash and want to throw together a quick table arrangement. What do you suggest?
It depends on what you like, I always like fruit. One cool thing is just to get an orange and put it on top of a small cube vase, or highball glass filled halfway with water. Make an ‘x’ on the top with a knife and take a stem of whatever it is (a rose, a tulip, a Gerber Daisy) and shove it all the way through until it hits the water. That’s super cute, modern, it’s clever, won’t block the view, and people will talk about it. You could also tie vintage fabric or a ribbon around the vase, and make a runner for the table. For place cards, you can use Cumquats. We cut off the end so it sits flat, and make another cut in the top and slide a little card in there with guests names, and then put it on a napkin. I’m really about the details, because they all add up.
Another cool thing that’s super Springy is using wheat grass. You can cut it into shapes and put it into containers. So you can do the same thing as with the orange: cut out a round of wheatgrass and put it in your highball glass, shoving your floral material in there and make it look like its sprouting. Or sometimes we just lay down the flats of wheatgrass, and put food on it, like bread and olive oil, etc… It’s kind of challenging to think outside the box, like why do you have to use a bowl? Why not a Napa cabbage? There’s lots of other things you can do besides making a flower arrangement that make it interesting.

What is your favorite part of owning your own business?
I guess it’s the control, you can do whatever you want. That can be a downside too. You definitely have to have a structure when you have a retail store and you have customers. I like the creativity, and that anything is possible. My husband has a government job, and we compare and contrast the differences all the time. He definitely has stability, but I like the unknown, and I like that everyday is different.

What is the biggest challenge?
The economy and employees. I’ve had anywhere and from 4-12 employees at a time, depending on how busy I am. When you’re super creative it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily good at business. Learning how to set up systems and structure is not my strong point but you really have to be organized when you run a business, it doesn’t matter what kind. For those creative types like myself, I think struggle to maintain creativity and develop systems and structures to make it all work. Though the economy has been awesome in a way because it’s made me work harder and make better decisions. I am also lucky, because I’m on my seventeenth year, so I have a lot of stability. I still lost so many of my customers and my sales in 2009 were down, but my profits were up. It was kind of a shock. So I made better decisions. Everything had to make money. And I was also more generous as I’ve ever been with my donations in 2009. So I found a good rhythm, and I think if the recession hadn’t been here I wouldn’t have had the ability to make more money and give more money.

Photo Credits: Jasmine Photography, Rebekah Johnson and Kevin Meyers

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