FEATURE • B/A FLORIST Pictured left to right: Cheryl Fountain, Barbara Ann Hollowick, Laurie Van Ark
FLOWER SHOP FLOURISHES UNDER DAUGHTERS’ CARE, 43 YEARS AFTER MOM PLANTED SEEDS BY: SHANDRA MARTINEZ
The flower shop Barbara Hollowick started in 1979 has put down deep roots in East Lansing. Her daughters, who run the shop now, say their mom’s “titanium backbone” helped them weather the challenges of the pandemic. Barbara Ann “B/A” Hollowick was a divorced mom of three in her early 40s in 1979 when she decided to turn her love of plants into a business. Not only did she largely develop her business without family support, but she did it at a time when women had little access to capital. It would be nearly a decade before the passage of the federal law — the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988 — that allowed women to get a business loan without a male co-signer. www.retailers.com
“I was fortunate that I never had to borrow money, so I never owed anyone any money,” said Hollowick, who started the business, B/A Florist, with about $300 in savings, a few vases, and flowers. In those early years, one wholesaler wouldn’t deliver flowers for big holiday orders, arguing it didn’t think the business had a chance of succeeding. The irony is that the male-owned, family-owned wholesale business closed more than two decades ago, while Hollowick’s East Lansing flower shop continues to flourish more than 40 years later. Daughter and owner Laurie Van Ark attributes the store’s resilience to her mother’s determination. “I always tell my mother that she has a titanium backbone. There are days where I might be whimpering about this or that, but I don’t have anywhere near the struggles she had,” Van Ark said. She and her older sister, Cheryl Fountain, still joke about Hollowick’s coffee mug that summed up her mantra: “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.” Although Hollowick earned her business degree from Michigan State University right before she opened the store, she says she benefited from being the daughter of a retailer. Her dad, Harry Raskin, sold auto parts. Flower sales bloom During the Great Recession in the late aughts, Van Ark asked her mom how she put up with the stress of the economic uncertainty. “She said, ‘At the end of the day, I know I still have a roof over my head and food to eat, and this will pass.’ It makes me take one step back and really look at the bigger picture,” Van Ark said. “I’m sure she thought for many years that I wasn’t listening, but I did. I hear her voice all
the time when I struggle with this issue or that issue, and the past two years were definitely a challenge.” Hollowick began by selling plants and lean-to greenhouses. A few years later, she added a flower cooler. Soon, flower sales blossomed and the business shifted to serve that demand. Van Ark was a high school junior when the store opened in Okemos. She helped out after school and on the weekends before heading to nearby Michigan State University to study merchandise management and textiles with a plan to find a job designing car interiors. When she graduated in 1984, her mother made her an offer: join her for five years to see if she liked the family business. That year, the store relocated to an iconic house on the corner of Grand River Avenue and Hagadorn Road in East Lansing. Sister act Hollowick retired a decade ago after 33 years at the helm. At that point, Van Ark considered doing the same, but says B/A Florist not only gives her a livelihood, it also offers her a sense of purpose and community. “It’s really wonderful the bonds that we have created with so many people in the community,” Van Ark said. “We’ve seen families from one end to the other: when they’re getting married, when they’re having babies, when their babies grow up. It’s neat to be included in people’s lives like that.” Her sister returned to Lansing in 2013 after raising children and retiring from a career as an elementary school teacher in Arizona. “I really do enjoy the customer interaction,” Fountain said. Listening to customers about why they are sending the flowers is an essential part of
