Meet Casey Scherrer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Casey Scherrer.

Casey, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
When I was a Montessori teacher, I introduced my class to a botany unit in 2013. I brought in different types of flowers for the students to study and I became obsessed with all the different flowers I found from local stores and shops. We would place the flowers in vases, and I always wanted them to look nice, but didn’t know how to arrange them. I was living in Chicago at the time, and discovered a night course in the city that taught basic floral designing mechanics and techniques. I was hooked! With summers off as a teacher, I began freelancing for other florists part-time for weddings. A lot of my friends were getting married around that time, and before I knew it, I began doing flowers for lots of friends’ weddings. Over the next year, I accumulated a collection of rental pieces and eventually had a solid inventory of vases and vessels filling up my apartment and my parents’ garage and basement.  I started my first official business, and soon I was getting inquiries from all sorts of people. I knew I was getting close to having to choose between having a floral business and being a teacher.  In 2015, I my love for designing and passion for entrepreneurship led me to opening my first design studio in Chicago. I was terrified, but the decision felt right in my heart. My company grew and grew, and I had to learn so many things as I went. I rebranded the company and established it as a new entity with a new name, La Rue Floral, toward the end of 2017. In 2017, my fiance and I made the decision to move to Denver for all the best reasons in the world. I knew deep down my floral style and design aesthetic was much better suited for mountain weddings, so we took a leap of faith and moved the business with us to Colorado. La Rue is thriving here and we could not be happier!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Entrepreneurship is a roller coaster ride. The highs and lows are very extreme, and in the beginning, it’s incredibly difficult to persevere through the first few years. There was so much about owning a business I didn’t know at first, and I faced the particular challenge of having limited funds in the beginning. Even with what I had saved up as a teacher, there were huge expenses I had to face in order to launch my business full time. I wrote a business plan, but without fully understanding the initial market, my competitors, and my strengths and weaknesses as a business owner at the time, it was hard to come up with a plan that would be fool proof. The first year of going full time with my business meant a lot of sleepless nights, learning as I went, trial and error, and absorbing everything I could from seminars, classes, workshops, and other who were mentoring me. When I finally felt comfortable enough with my business plan, I presented it to my friend’s grandmother, who had always believed in me and my business. She ended up providing me with the start-up loan I needed to be successful my first year, and with a reasonable interest rate, she gave me five years to pay her back. Thanks to her, I was able to make it through my first year until I had enough business coming in to take care of things financially. When you’ve been accustomed to the security of being on pay roll as an employee, it’s very scary to go completely on your own without knowing what the outcome will be. Somehow, I made it through!

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about La Rue Floral – what should we know?
La Rue Floral is a boutique floral design company that specializes in luxury mountain weddings here in Colorado. Most of it’s weddings are in beautiful mountain venues, but it is a Denver-based company and I love the unique and trendy venues the city of Denver has to offer as well. My design style is a combination of romantic, garden floral arrangements and organic, fine art designs that play with interesting lines and textures. In Chicago, I was having a difficult time selling my preferred floral style to clients. The markets and trends are very different between Chicago and Denver, and something was telling me that I would thrive if I was closer to nature and more connected to the trends and styles influenced by the West Coast and mountains.

La Rue Floral only takes on about 10 weddings each season, which is why I refer to it as a “boutique” floral company. It is extremely important to me that I am able to be present and deeply involved with each wedding personally, therefore I only take on one wedding each weekend. I think my clients appreciate this because it means they have my exclusive attention for their entire wedding. It allows me to allows being there to say hello on the wedding day, manage the details from all of the conversations we’ve had over the course of their wedding planning, drop off the bouquets personally, and oversee the entire wedding flower execution from start to finish. I want to be sure my clients feel completely taken care of, excited, and happy with their floral investment.

I am very proud of my business and how much it has grown over the last five years. One of the things I’m most proud of is having clients choose my company because of our style and aesthetic. Every couple or family that hires La Rue Floral is a couple or family I greatly enjoy working with. Operationally, I’m incredibly proud of my organization and how skilled I’ve gotten at executing a wedding from start to finish. From writing very clear and unique proposals to communication with the team and client to placing orders, staffing, designing and caring for the flowers, and logistics for the week of the wedding, I can confidently say I know what I’m doing and feel comfortable with it. I’ve worked with countless planners, vendors, and venues, and have a deep understanding about the essential things needed to get the job done well for our clients.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
My organization has made me very successful. All of us florists do things a little differently from one another, and the secret is finding the right systems and processes that work for you. I’ve had to look at my strengths and weaknesses over the years and come to terms with where I excel the most and feel the most confident in as well as what I need to improve on. If necessary, I hire out the areas I’m weakest in and delegate tasks to others who I know are can do the job very well (and far better than me). My biggest strength is my organization, and it’s only gotten better over the years. When my team arrives for production, they pretty much know exactly what to do because I have systems that communicate things pretty clearly and intuitively for them. This also reduces the number of questions being asked, which then allows me to focus on tasks that require my concentration or artistic attention. I never knew I was as organized as I was until I started my business, and it’s served me well through the years.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.laruefloral.com
• Instagram: @laruefloral
• Facebook: La Rue Floral

Image Credit:
Sarah Porter Photography, Rebecca Haley Photography, True Grace Photography, Carrie King Photographer, Mckenzie Coyle Photography, Caitlin Lisa Photography

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