Meet the couple of young entrepreneurs who moved to Portugal and tapped into the ‘power of flowers’ to create a blooming business.

We all know that coming across a patch of flowers can brighten our day. But did you know that recent research has also shown that, if you bring a bunch indoors with you, they will have a huge, long lasting effect on our mood and overall mental well-being?

I admit, being a long time flower lover, I did have my suspicions that this might be the case. However, when a ‘couple of entrepreneurs’ called Firuza and Ramin wrote in to The Portugal News to tell us how they had taken this idea and recently moved to Portugal to start an online weekly flower subscription business called ‘Floovly’, I just had to find out more.

I met this dynamic and charming couple for coffee in Lagos (where they have been living since September) and I learnt about their inspiring journey and how they have managed to tap into this amazing ‘Power of Flowers’. I found out how they not only provide beautiful bouquets every week to brighten the rooms and minds of people in lots of big cities in Europe but also, how they used this newfound ‘power’ (not that I want to give the flowers all the credit) to give them the peace (and perseverance) of mind to quit their jobs and create their own business and prove that: if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.

From business to pleasure

Firuza and Ramin are both from Baku in Azerbaijan. They even went to the same school but funnily enough, they didn’t actually meet there. In fact, it was only in 2017, when Firuza came to work at the same company as Ramin, that he (eventually) persuaded her to go out on a date with him. They laughed and told me how they just ‘talked business’ on this first date and realised they both had the same entrepreneurial flair and burning ambition to escape the corporate world and to be their own bosses.

They got married in 2019 and took the bold move to quit their jobs and attempt to start their own online business. The first few ideas they had didn’t quite pay off, but they didn’t give up. Firuza explained how quitting their jobs gave them the fire and determination they needed to keep trying and to ‘make it work’ - because there was simply no other choice.

Portugal Calling

They were thrilled when they were invited by Startup Portugal to launch their new project here and moved to Lisbon in April 2021. They told me how wonderful it has been and how they are finally getting recognized for all their hard work. They had a booth at the Web Summit in Lisbon in November and they also told me the crazy story of how after having just moved down to Lagos, they happened to check their junk mail one evening and realized they had missed a rather important email. At the last minute, they rushed back up to Lisbon where they were given the chance to pitch their Startup to none other than the President of Portugal himself, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

Flower Arranging

The couple loves to travel and having their businesses online has allowed them to work from anywhere. They’ve made a point to visit all the florists that supply their flowers as they think it's incredibly important to cultivate a personal relationship with them. So far, Floovly operates in Lisbon, London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Prague and Bratislava. And so, if you follow them on Instagram, they are bound to take you along on these ’flower arranging’ business trips and you can enjoy the epic pictures and cute little videos of them happily embracing all the delights that these cities have to offer.

Passing it on

But now they have learnt how to start a successful online business, they have started to pass this knowledge along. They offer programs where they let wannabe entrepreneurs in on the tips and tricks they’ve learnt along the way and even go so far as to offer an ‘E-commerce Store Creation Service’ and will get the business up and running for them.

Firuza told me she has also recently started to create and sell NFT’s (Non-Fungible Tokens). I’ll level with you, this is something I’m only pretending to understand. However, if you have the mind for it, then she showed me this really lovely collection of 50 different pictures of women she’s hand painted (digitally on Procreate). It's called ‘EMPWRD WOMEN’ and comes from her desire to help empower women start-up founders and women NFT artists and 50% of these NFT sales will go to organizations supporting this mission.

Learning to chill in the sun

Being used to the big cities, Lagos has been a slower pace of life for this ‘Flower Power Couple’ but they’ve been embracing it wholeheartedly, going to the beach every day, learning how to be more mindful and remembering to, well… ‘stop and smell the flowers’.

If you would like to follow their adventures and have them share their ideas on how you too could become a digital entrepreneur and start globe trotting, then please add them on Instagram @Firuzaramin, or subscribe to brighten your space and mind with flowers (every Wednesday!) by visiting their website www.floovly.com