Preserved flowers venture blooms

Yanyan Li and Charisse Peng are making good use of their creative streak to grow Fleur de Ean. Photos by Grig Montegrande

Planning to give your wife a beautiful bouquet this coming Valentine’s—again?

That’s all well and good, but if you’re looking to spice things up this year, a couple of young entrepreneurs propose a better gift idea: preserved flowers.

Business partners Yanyan Li and Charisse Peng are the duo behind Fleur de Ean, an online flower shop which sells arranged preserved flowers encased in unusual containers such as photo frames and glass domes that double as bluetooth speakers.

The idea came from 28-year-old Peng’s husband Andrew, who stumbled upon a workshop on how to make preserved flowers during a trip to China.

“I always tell my husband—and we’ve been a couple for eight years—don’t buy flowers for me. Even though I really love flowers, I’ve always thought that they’re a waste of money since they wither in just a week or so,” says Peng. “So when he saw the workshop, he thought it would be a nice gift for me.”

The gift Peng received, as it turns out, was the business idea sparked by those preserved flowers.

Both gifted with a creative streak—Peng has a Multimedia Arts degree from the College of St. Benilde and also does photography; Li, on the other hand, has always had a passion for DIY crafts, even running a short-lived felt paper crafts business when she was studying accounting in De La Salle University—the two then began to study the art of arranging preserved flowers.

The red rose arrangement was inspired by the movie “Beauty and the Beast.”

The two opened a Facebook page for Fleur de Ean (the brand “Ean” is a combination of their Chinese names) in October last year, which within three months already had around 10,000 likes.

“Just for that one product, the glass dome arrangement, we’ve sold around 40. We also have small items, like the keychains, and we sold over 100 of that,” says Peng.

The two admit that arranging preserved flowers isn’t a new thing; through the course of establishing their business, they discovered that these products are already popular in many parts of Asia.

“But here in the Philippines it isn’t too popular yet,” says Peng.

“Here, some luxury flower shops also encase their products in glass jars, but the arrangements are different, as we come up with our own,” adds Li.

While Peng’s husband initially bought their first preserved flowers in China, the two realized that Japan made higher-quality ones.

Now, aside from Japan, they also source preserved flowers from Ecuador and Colombia.

Their cheapest product, the keychain (made of a transparent acrylic balls which encase the flower), costs P950 each; the most expensive, at P6,200, is the arrangement inside a glass dome with a bluetooth speaker.

Li and Peng also customize arrangements based on a customer’s request. They recently decorated an office space, livening up its reception area with their products.

Online flower shop Fleur de Ean offers unique flower arrangements in unusual containers.

Also, inspired by the upcoming live action version of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” the two created their own version of the red rose in the movie, encased in a glass dome and wrapped with a string of lights which illuminate the flower. That one costs around P5,000.

The products may seem pricey, but that’s because the flowers are guaranteed to last at least two years—and with the proper maintenance, even a lifetime, says Peng.

“The care is very simple. Just don’t water it, avoid direct sunlight, no wind, and don’t store in a humid area,” says Li.

What better way to express your undying love, then, than to say it with preserved flowers?