Vendor Spotlight: Rabble Flowers
Written by Cory Cathcart
Rabble Flowers’ St’Artup 317 Season 3 window display
Erika Young is the one woman show running Rabble Flowers. She is a florist and artist who wants to create an authentic and inspiring experience for her customers. In her freshly new business she has done work locally, as well as nationwide. When we sat down to interview her, she brought one of her beautifully crafted bouquets along. A passerby who stopped to admire her work and get her business card captures the essence of the art Young is providing to the world. Find her work on her website and follow her on Instagram.
Tell us about yourself and your business. How did you find your way into the flower business?
I had been doing a job in a farmers market and was able to trade with a farmer who had flowers, so periodically I would get some flowers and play around with them. Since I am a creative person it seemed very applied to me. I saw it as a way to make a living and that's what I wanted.
How did Rabble Flowers get started?
The name is kind of chewy in the mouth, it’s a little bit awkward which was my first impression of it. My mother has a food truck. There’s tons of food trucks here (in Indianapolis) but she’s in Cass County which is an hour and a half north of here, and she’s the only one with a food truck. Her vision for her retirement is to run her food truck, and do it in a farm-to-food truck kind of way. I had already been doing flowers in Indy, working for JP Parker, Steve’s, Bloom’s, and Bokay, and now I work for myself. Anyway, we partnered together for us to share her name which is Rabble Rouser’s Farm to Truck. Her last name is Rouser. A Rabble Rouser is someone who is a leader of the rebels. Not like confederate rebels, it’s just breaking away from norms or traditions in a very lighthearted, let’s have a party, incite good times way. My logo brings it home. It really supports a lot of my natural inclinations I guess. It’s a man and he’s holding a megaphone, so that’s kind of symbolic of a Rabble Rouser yelling into a crowd.
What's been the best part and worst part of owning your own business?
The best part is being able to do something that I love, and guided by my own sensibilities and design. I also really like working with the public. It’s a unique and intimate experience to take a call and the customers letting me know their occasion. I’m pretty concise and I just sort of get to the details, but the card messages really make an impact. What people will say in a card message is, a lot of times, really intimate and something that's shared between them. Whether it's happy or whatever, a lot of times people are funny. I feel like I am sort of a conduit of that messaging, and at the same time the flowers are a symbol of whatever their sentiment is. So that’s what I love about it. What I don’t love about it… I’m the admin, and the designer, and the delivery person. I have struggled with learning how to coordinate all of those things, mainly delivery. I’ll be happy the day when I can get to a level where I can get someone to do that for me. It’s been a good experience in that I created my brand and built my website, it’s all in-house, and I am lucky that I get some support from my boyfriend who is a computer wiz. The pandemic actually benefited my business. There are some silver linings, and I think that people are thinking about how they spend their money in a way. Many stores, by necessity, had to close. I don’t have employees. I work from my house, so curbside pickup and delivery are the options, no matter what's happening. Once I figured that part out I was like, “Shoot I can just do this right here, I don’t need to wait until I can open a store.” Now that I’m doing it like this I wouldn’t want it any other way. It would be great to have extra space, but that’ll be in the future, so I’m okay.
Tell us about your St'Artup 317 window display. Where did the idea come from, how long did it take you to plan and execute, etc?
I had a lot of fun making it and it was an experiment for me. I’ve never done anything like that. I designed and built the frame. In 2017, I went to the Chelsea Flower Show in London. I attended a flower school there. It was so cool and the most posh thing I’ve ever been to. That event is a huge thing there every May. All of the shops around the city participate. They dress their windows and make this big party out of it. There are large pieces and there might be some type of theme. I wanted to do something like that and I didn’t have any real guidance or a team, or instructions or anything. I just wanted to try it out. It was my original intention to do a butterfly for the opening of my pop-up which was supposed to have a retail space, so that was my thinking for my brand opening. Just to say “Hello everyone, here we are. Look at this larger than life thing.” Just something artistic that says, “I can make something artistic, but also gifts and flowers for a wedding,” just something to make a statement about my personal creativity. More than that, a butterfly is a symbol of rebirth, regeneration, and genesis, and to me it seemed very relevant to what the world’s going through. It was sort of like we’ll see how long this lasts. Let’s get it up, take some pictures, and have some fun and hopefully get some attention.
What do you hope to get out of this experience?
Challenging myself to try something new. There was a lot that I did plan for, and there were things that I didn’t. I was trouble-shooting, and that's all learning. That's necessary, and the only way to grow. I just sort of lean into that. In addition to getting some exposure, it’s also a chance to test an idea. It was a really good experience. Even letting it disintegrate over some days, I was okay with that because looking at a piece of art through a window is different than seeing a picture of it on Instagram. I guess what I mean is that experience IS a different experience. It's kind of like the experience of viewing art or being in a gallery. It brings up questions in the mind and sparks curiosity, like, “Where did this come from? I want to know more.” You’re putting out your frequency to the world and it is uniquely yours, and that's authentic and real.