Even though he’s deviated from his original, more traditional business ambition, Simon still relies on his university business education.
However, while pursuing his degree he worked part-time at a florist’s to improve his salesmanship. When one of his professors tasked his class with creating a comprehensive business plan, Simon looked to the most familiar thing. He drafted the plan for what would blossom into his business, Alain Simon Fleurs, in Montreal.
“I never had a passion for flowers,” Simon says. “It was a total accident. But I started working on it and eventually got seduced by the product.”
Now Simon believes his flower shop to be unique in Montreal. It offers no gift items and only sells fresh plants. About 80 per cent of its business is packing galas with stunning arrangements.
Aside from the occasional aging bloom that gets used in a sample for an upcoming event, Simon has to get rid of everything he doesn’t sell during the course of the week. He says those are just the perils of trading in the transient.
“With my flowers, I create art. Unfortunately, flowers don’t last long,” he says. “If I were a painter, it would be easier, because it would stick around. But in this case, you do art, you take the best pictures that you can and you let people feel what you’ve done.”
And he’s taken plenty of pictures. In 2012, for instance, Simon wrote, directed and produced a four-minute video to showcase a $6,000 flower dress, imagined for years and finally realized. In addition to renting out six expensive spots at Place Bonaventure’s Grand Salon Marions-Nous, Simon actually purchased the luxury car in which the video’s young dress-wearer poses.
He says it merited the price tag because it adequately celebrated the fruition of his long dreamt-about project. He reveres grandeur and surprise.
“Any gala I create is to see the reaction,” he says. “That has to be the most important thing. I want to make something that people are awestruck when they see.”
One time, he provided flowers for a young woman’s wedding to the tune of $30,000. In the middle of the evening, the bride’s dad came stomping up to him on the dance floor and yanked him into a hug. He was so thankful he couldn’t even contain it.
“We over-deliver,” says Simon. “But then you charge $30,000 and they say thanks.”
Alain Simon standing in front of the 2.5 x 2.5 metre wall of flowers he designed for the Glamorous Bridal Show, hosted at the Mont Blanc in Laval, Que., in 2014.