Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Crosswhite Tori Maguire.
Hi Megan Crosswhite, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
First of all hi, Megan & Tori here. We own and love The Flower Shop. We started small with a dream of bringing a modern flower and gift shop to our hometown — something that felt fresh, intentional, and different from the traditional flower shop experience. We saw a need in our community for a place where people could not only find beautiful flowers, but also thoughtfully curated gifts, apparel, and everyday items all in one place.
A storefront downtown was always the dream, but we didn’t start in a storefront though. Megan’s sweet Nana let us work from her storage building while we got started and figured out our plan (January of 2024). We even had our first Valentine’s Day in that building! Then one day we got a call from a local funeral home saying they wanted us to contract with them to do their flowers and in that moment we knew that is how we would afford our storefront! One day when dropping off paperwork at our bank we noticed a vacancy notice being put on one of the buildings downtown and long story short we toured it, loved it, and signed the lease in faith that this was going to work (this was March of 2024)We started with literally nothing. Just an empty storefront and we worked and designed on white folding tables and Tori even put our first purchase of flowers on her personal card because we had no money. Then month by month we got busier, we began contracting with both funeral homes in town, gained so much support from our community, and joined our local chamber to get more connected and by October we were busy enough to hire our first two employees! By the end of the year we were voted Best New Business of Cleveland for 2024 and Best Storefront of 2024!
Fast forward to today- we now have 4 employees & 1 baby (Megan welcomed her first born at the end of 2025 and he comes to work everyday with her now) we have also won Best Customer Service Award for 2025 and feel like we are just getting started. Every month we’re getting busier and gaining more and more support from our community. The community we have called home for so long has blessed us in such a way where we are living out our dreams bigger than we could of ever imagined.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Like any small business, there were plenty of challenges along the way. Opening a flower shop is so much more than arranging flowers — it’s managing inventory, balancing payroll, taking risks on product purchases, and constantly learning how to grow and sustain a business. In the beginning especially, there was a lot of pressure behind the scenes trying to attract customers, build trust within the community, and turn first-time shoppers into repeat customers.
The floral industry can also be unpredictable, and we’ve definitely had moments that tested us. One of the biggest was when our floral cooler froze right before an event, freezing all of our flowers and shattering every vase in the cooler. We ended up making an emergency trip to Houston to completely replace inventory in order to fulfill orders and show up for our customer. Moments like that are exhausting and stressful in real time, but they also taught us resilience, problem-solving, and how important it is to remain dependable no matter what happens behind the scenes.
There have been long days, hard seasons, and a lot of learning curves, but every challenge has helped shape the business into what it is today.”
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
What sets us apart is that we truly strive to create a flower shop for everyone. We believe flowers should be accessible at any budget, whether someone is picking up a simple bouquet “just because” or investing in florals for a major life event. No matter the price point, we want every customer to feel cared for and leave with something beautiful.
Over time, we’ve grown into much more than a traditional flower shop. From daily deliveries and custom sympathy work to weddings, events, our interactive Flower Bar, and even hosting small showers and gatherings in our space, we love being part of both the everyday moments and the biggest milestones in people’s lives. One thing we’re especially proud of is creating floral workshops that bring people together. In a small town, it’s important to create spaces for connection, creativity, and fun, and seeing all different kinds of people come together over flowers has been incredibly rewarding.
More than anything, though, we’re most proud of the culture behind the business. We are truly a family business in every sense of the word. Our team feels like family, and we’ve always wanted the shop to feel welcoming not just to employees, but to their families too. Kids stop by after school, husbands pop in throughout the day, and Megan is able to bring her son to work every day. We’ve worked hard to build an environment centered around what matters most to us, and around here, that’s family, community, and creating something meaningful together.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
What makes this job so meaningful to us is getting to be part of people’s stories and special moments — both the joyful ones and the hard ones. Flowers are so much more than something pretty to us. Behind almost every arrangement is a reason, a memory, or a meaningful moment in someone’s life.
We love hearing the ‘why’ behind the flowers. Sometimes it’s a birthday, an anniversary, a first date, or celebrating a promotion. Other times, it’s someone going through a difficult season who simply needs a little encouragement or reminder that they’re loved. We’ve created flowers for celebrations, for sympathy and loss, for those sick needing a pick me up, and for countless everyday moments that may seem small but mean everything to the person receiving them.
Being trusted to help people express love, comfort, celebration, and support is something we never take lightly. At the end of the day, what makes us happiest is knowing that what we create has the ability to make someone feel seen, loved, and cared for.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theflowershopcleveland.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theflowershopcleveland?utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1ZN9mibjDy/?mibextid=wwXIfr
