My Biz: Jesup floral shop caters to community

Pat McIntosh, owner of The Farmer's Wife, and her family were not trying to take over the area floral business when they bought a building in Jesup in 2000.

The busy farmer's wife and mother of four and her husband had open enrolled their children in the Jesup school district and made several trips a day into the small town, so they decided to keep an eye out for a building for a prospective business venture.

'I had worked for a flower shop and I do a lot of other things such as artwork,' McIntosh said. 'When we first opened here we were offering bakery items, floral products, paintings — and even seamstress work.'

The business was truly a family-owned and operated business, with her sister covering the seamstress duties and her mother baking and providing cakes and other homemade products.

The Farmer's Wife offers unusual floral arrangements for high school dance events, funerals and weddings, along with gift items, paintings, garden art, in addition to the children's books that McIntosh began writing and illustrating three years ago.

'When we did our very first homecoming dance flowers here in Jesup,' she recalled, 'I was hoping a few people would give us a try. That was going to be the deciding factor on just what this business was going to be.'

McIntosh thought they'd get maybe five or six orders.

'We were just trying to offer what we could that the community needed, so the kids kept coming in and by the time we were done, we'd done 96 corsages and boutonnieres that first homecoming. So I said, 'I guess we are a flower shop,'' she laughed.

'In addition to carrying the normal gift shop lines, I also like to incorporate a lot of different things into my arrangements,' McIntosh explained, 'and I am pretty well known for adding things to my arrangements.'

She has added taxidermy birds that one of her clients brought in to be included in a family funeral arrangement, as well as a fairly expensive fishing pole that another customer brought in and wanted included in their piece.

'I get a lot of requests for angels,' she said, 'but I figure out how to put a specific item into the piece I am designing to make it look like it belongs together. We are a little bit different from the other flower shops around, for this reason.'

The whole McIntosh family has helped in the business, and still does, although all four of the McIntosh children are grown, married and parents themselves.

'I have a couple ladies who come in during the week to help me,' she noted, 'but my daughter and daughters-in-law like to come and help with the workload.'

As a business owner who has offered many different services and products through the years, McIntosh says the biggest lesson she's learned is to keep up on technology for marketing purposes.

'The technology has advanced so much and it is hard to keep up with it,' she said. 'I used to use technology through Teleflora and now it comes through FTD.

'It should be getting simpler, but it seems to have gotten more complicated, so keeping up with that is really important.'

AT A GLANCE

Name: Patricia McIntosh

Title: Owner

Business: The Farmer's Wife

Address: 651 Young St., Jesup

Telephone: (319) 827-2123

Website: www.farmerswifeflowers.com

Know a company in business for more than a year that would make a great My Biz? Contact George C. Ford at george.ford@thegazette.com