“I wouldn’t have gotten a website online without this grant.”

Hilary needed a way to sell her products online.

Hilary Searcy is a first-time business owner and needed a website for her company, Blooms Around the Bend.

The owner of Blooms Around the Bend is a hardworking mom of 4.

Although Hilary is kept busy being a mom of four wonderful children and has a full-time job, she has the goal to create healthy soil life and provide consumers in the region with healthy options for plants. Hilary found herself on the sustainable food systems track when she was getting her Master's in Strategic Sustainability and Leadership from IUSB. She’s always loved flowers and when she learned that you can use flowers to regenerate soil, the perfect business opportunity became apparent to her. Hilary wanted to make sure that people had safe, healthy options available locally so she created a company that grows sustainable flowers.

I know that in my garden it’s healthy. And it wasn’t picked a week and a half ago. It was picked yesterday. –Hilary, the owner

What is Blooms Around the Bend?

Blooms Around the Bend, LLC is currently growing on roughly a 1/10 acre lot in an urban neighborhood in South Bend, Indiana. The company does not use chemical pesticides, only compost tea, leaf mold tea, and fish emulsion.

All my flowers are grown using an outdoor method of germinating and growing seeds in the winter in recycled jugs instead of inside under lights, and fertilized with a natural fish/seaweed fertilizer. –Hilary, the owner

“I wouldn’t have gotten a website online without this grant.” — Hilary

Being in the 21st century she knew that she needed an online presence to attract customers and let more people know about the work that she’s doing. Hilary’s initial problem was that she didn’t know where to go to get started.

For somebody who considers herself to not be very techie, Hilary expressed to us that it’s really overwhelming to know where to start with creating a website for your business.

Everyone at Code Works was always kind and super helpful. — Hilary, owner of Blooms Around the Bend

Our team understands that as the owner of a new business, Hillary has very limited time and needs to be able to keep all of the balls in the air (product, marketing, sales, etc). We decided to jump in and help with some foundational technology pieces to get her going with her business by giving her a website and online store.

We decided to do this using the e-commerce gold standard, Shopify. It is friendly to manage and we knew we would be setting Hillary up for success by putting our efforts into spinning up her store with Shopify. We appreciated that Hilary told us that having a team to work with helped her to grow more comfortable with using technology.

A really beautiful website with photographs of my garden and bouquets. It’s set up as a digital storefront and so ideally, you can go online and purchase and bouquets. — Hilary, the owner

Where to find Blooms Around the Bend, LLC

Blooms Around the Bend is at the Portage Farm Stands market Saturday mornings from 10 a.m. to 12 noon. You can also follow them on social media 👇

Facebook: Blooms Around the Bend, LLC
Instagram: @bloomsaroundthe

Code Works is a digital product studio. We love partnering with businesses to develop impactful technology solutions. We take a holistic approach to technology that takes end-users, business processes, and financial impact into consideration. As a technology partner, we will help you make decisions as a domain expert and new digital product owner that lead to the development of an exciting solution with a real impact on your users and your business. Drop us a line at info@sbcodeworks.com.