MONTREAL – Moving is often bittersweet, and it certainly was for the Van Egmonds, the family behind Edgewood Florist.
You don’t relocate a business from a site (in Côte St. Luc) that put you on the map and served you well for decades without a lot of trepidation.
“There’s been a range of emotions. I was 6 months old when my dad bought the business. I grew up in the adjacent house. It’s part of you. It’s in your blood,” said co-owner Corinne Van Egmond, 56, in an interview at the new store in Montreal West.
Edgewood changed addresses this month, after more than 80 years at its previous location, the last 56 under the stewardship of the Van Egmond family.
It also altered its vocation, effectively abandoning the commercial cultivation that used to be its primary activity to focus on retail in its new store in a commercial building on Milton Ave., about three kilomters, or a six-minute drive from the former location.
From 18,000 square feet, it’s downsized to 4,000.
“It’s a good space for us, modern, easy to manage and work in, with a loading dock and good access to the highways, close to our customer base.
Being five minutes away is important for people who’ve been coming to you for so long,” Van Egmond said.
“Our old place was a destination,” added brother Murray, 47. “It was in a residential neighbourhood. Nobody happened by. We get more traffic here in two minutes than you’d get there in a day.”
Their father, Dirk, who immigrated from Holland in 1950, bought Edgewood Nurseries with former partner Henk Broekhuizen in 1956. They’d met at the local Dutch club.
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Both men had experience with flowers. Dirk’s family grew tulip bulbs in Holland, and when he moved to Quebec, he got work at a nursery in St. Laurent.
In the 1950s, Edgewood was situated on the outskirts of the village of Côte St. Luc.
Housing developments eventually surrounded the 18,000-square-foot site and its greenhouses on Hudson Ave., but Edgewood stayed put, catering to a faithful, and largely local, clientele.
The changing economics of the business are what finally forced a move.
Property taxes shot up after the municipal demergers, and greenhouses (which cannot be insulated) are expensive to heat. Big-box stores expanded their lines of plants and flowers.
And the recession of 2008-09 intensified pressure for cost controls, because flowers are an obvious target when people run short of disposable income.
“The flower business is not on any list of the Top 100 money-making businesses,” Corinne said.
“You do it because you’re born into it and it’s what you do, or because you’re passionate about flowers.”
She and Murray took the helm at Edgewood as part of a succession plan implemented after the death of their father’s partner in 1999.
In time, they decided the retail side of the business interested them more, and opted to leave the growing and wholesaling to others.
“You cannot do both and be successful anymore. Each has its own schedule and space requirements. And if you’re not creative about finding new ways to to business and introducing new lines, you won’t last,” Corinne said.
One line it’s expanded is what’s known in the trade as permanent flowers and plants – the kind that never need watering because they’re artificial.
“The quality has improved a lot in the last 10 years, they look very real, and there’s a market for them.
“Some people are gone for weeks at a time, and some people really do have black thumbs,” Corinne said.
Market segments they’re also hoping to tap into more are corporate and professional offices, who can become steady customers, and event coordinators, who often place large orders. To get their attention, Edgewood routinely sends out complimentary arrangements.
For a family business, service is the key to survival, Corinne said.
“You need a happy customer. That’s the most important thing. You do what it takes. You go the extra mile. That’s why we’ve been in business this long.”
As things stand, Edgewood still has one foot in its past and one in its future.
The Côte St. Luc property, which attracted three offers to purchase the same day, will officially change hands in mid-August, and the greenhouses will come down shortly after to make room for four new homes.
Until then, Dirk Van Egmond, 87, will continue his daily routine of being the first on the grounds and opening the greenhouse ventilators.
“We’ve decided we’re going to put a small greenhouse in the new location,” Corinne said. “This way, we’ll have a bit of our history with us, a little bit of the old inside the new.”
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