When I was born, my Mum was employed at a brickworks. There was no such thing as maternity leave back then, so once she had me, she was promptly back at work and would take me there with her in a little bassinet. I am quite sure that this was the reason that as a child, for years I had a recurring dream of walking through a big and strangely, very beautiful brick factory with cream-coloured floors and huge, colourful stained-glass windows.
I’ve lusted after beautiful and big, industrial-like spaces since I was a little girl and my propensity to fall in love with them has made finding the right building for my business ideas challenging, usually because the budget never quite matches the vision.
Before The Beautiful Bunch, I was running another social enterprise, focused on hospitality and events. After nearly three years of looking for a home, we finally found one - a small, but stunning light-filled studio in Fitzroy North with an enormous ceiling, and arched windows flanked by soft, heavy, royal blue curtains.
When I first saw the space, we weren’t there to look for a commercial lease, but rather somewhere to hire for one night for an event. There was a baby grand piano in the middle of the room. When we left, I found myself thinking it was a shame, but we would have to find somewhere else for that piano once I’d convinced the owner of the building to let us rent the site permanently.
In large part because it wasn’t actually available, it took six months to negotiate a lease. Within eight weeks of finally moving in, we had to leave. Covid and the lockdowns that followed took the business that I loved. I spent months isolated, pregnant and broke. In a dim and tiny rental apartment, I would find myself wondering what the light was doing in that studio. It felt unjust that the place was empty - soundless, dormant, nobody within those walls to appreciate its beauty. It seemed like a waste, because despite losing the business, we still had access to this space. Our landlord, the local church, let us keep it and wasn’t charging us rent.
The Beautiful Bunch was born seven months later for a lot of reasons, but the first being that I couldn’t stand the idea of the studio standing empty. Our first week of trade brought a colour explosion to the cream walls. It was Spring and I didn’t know what I was doing or how much I should be spending – I purchased all of the prettiest flowers at market and marvelled at how they brought beauty and joy to that space.
The business grew, and then it didn’t, we expanded our training program, and then had to reign it in. The turbulence felt manageable and mistakes could be made because I knew that whatever happened, we would still have a roof over our head. Amidst the upheaval of Covid and ceaseless lockdowns, caring for a newborn, and never having enough money, those four walls held me. They kept me steady when it felt like the ground would not stop shaking; when we couldn't move freely, they gave me somewhere beautiful to be.
We found our feet at the three-year point. Each season suddenly became much busier than the last and some days we struggled to get orders out the door. It wasn't until the buckets of flowers were sitting next to the bins and we were trying to tarp the courtyard so we could work outside, did I finally accept that we had grown bigger than the 35 square metres of space could hold. Reluctantly, I started to make plans to leave a place that felt like home.
It’s hard to imagine how The Beautiful Bunch would have come to be without that space. It was a desire to fill it with life that led me to start the social enterprise to begin with. Of course, it’s usually the other way around and the process of having a good idea and then needing to find somewhere for it to live, can feel like one of the most stressful and scary parts of the start-up journey.
This is where we are now with Rooftop Roses. I have visited what feels like hundreds (but is in actual fact only 12) potential sites, looking for a space that doesn’t just have the physical requirements, but that fundamentally feels right. I am holding out hope for another baby grand piano moment – a point when you intuitively know that you are on the right path to the extent that you start mentally rearranging furniture in a room that is not yours.
J x
