This week, we sat down for an interview with Mandy McMechan, the founder of Plaisir Cadeaux et Fleurs. The company was founded in March 2017 in a bid to provide UAE residents with unmatched luxury gifting solutions.
See what we learned about Mandy McMechan and her company through our interview below.
Explain the background of you and the company in detail.
Taking influence from French floristry, Plaisir Cadeaux et Fleurs has developed a signature aesthetic that embraces flowers as a core medium. Favouring quality and creative ingenuity above all else, Plaisir is able to deliver luxury flower arrangements that are truly unique.
While other flower boutiques may add large amounts of leaves to give size, Plaisir prefers to focus more on the flowers themselves. Plaisir is committed to creating high-quality designs using triple A-graded flowers imported directly from Dutch growers. Plaisir is especially known for its rare range of flowers and is recognizable for its velvet boxes. Mandy strongly believes that floristry is an art form, and as such, it is an expression of one’s personality. Together with their highly skilled team, under the watchful eye and creative direction of the founder and expert florist Mandy McMechan, Plaisir has become a trusted leader in the UAEs flower scene.
What are your goals?
Our goals are to expand our reach to other GCC countries through our newly launched website expansion, allowing us to deliver a range of products outside the UAE while continuing to provide white-glove service and high-quality gifting solutions to our UAE clients.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of yourself/company right now?
Our biggest strength centres around understanding our customers. Our clients are always the ones we have in mind when making any creative or strategic business decisions. We continuously reflect and self-evaluate in order to improve and innovate. Our strength further circles on questions such as how we can better serve our customers, better listen to them and improve their overall experience while consistently staying on course with our core values.
What was the path you/your company took to get to where you are today?
Starting any business comes with challenges, but how you find solutions moves you forward. In the beginning, I had to spend a considerable amount of time researching the different elements of the business, developing our concept, and finding the right suppliers and staff. A great deal of self-education and practical on-the-job learning came with it. I strongly believe without completely immersing myself in the process from a-z, we would not have achieved what we have achieved so far. I always say that an effective leader starts from the bottom and works alongside the team in all aspects of the business, from sweeping the floors to conducting management meetings.
Why did you start (or want to be the head of) this company?
I credit my love of flowers to a lifetime of watching my mother fuss over hers. Even at the age of 85, when my mother could hardly walk, she still tended to each and every one of her flower boxes on her balcony, all of which she planted herself. Fresh flowers were always something I was surrounded by during my childhood living in my parental home. I believe there is something about fresh, beautifully presented flowers that can perk up even the dullest of days. Whether gifting or receiving them, they are a true mood enhancer.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Floristry in the UAE is a challenge simply because we live in the desert, and our fresh stock must be flown in from different countries. This results in us not having the ability to buy flowers with our eyes. We have to buy them from online pictures. This further prevents us from checking quality and the ability to find inspiration if we were to enter into a fresh flower market to select our weekly stock. We have overcome this challenge by establishing strong relationships with our Holland growers and agents directly so they can be our eyes on the ground before shipping us the weekly stock. We spend more money that way, but we are assured of the high quality we offer.
Give us one word that describes you the best.
Workaholic
What makes you excited about Mondays?
Monday is one of our shipment days. We are always excited to open up the boxes; it’s like Christmas!
What do you value most about your culture and vision?
Gifting is heavily ingrained in the local culture in the UAE and is something I value and admire. Being in the gifting industry, we pride ourselves on offering unique and exciting products to our clients.
Being hospitable is also a big part of my culture, and you can feel that as soon as you enter our boutique. Whether a client purchase a single rose or our most expensive acrylic box, how we make you feel when you leave our boutique is what is important to us.
Tell us about a project that forced you to be innovative and creative.
Every project we take on is an opportunity for us to be innovative and creative. That is what makes our industry so exciting. Whether our client has a specific wish or would prefer for us to create something special for them, we take great pride in pushing the boundaries of creativity. For example, we had a corporate client who had a 1950s-themed event for 200 guests, and they asked us to create a small centrepiece for each table reflecting the theme. We opted to create a diner’s style ice-cream milkshake using flowers and a few food items (picture below).
What are your company’s strategies, and how do they stand unique from your competitors?
We offer products that others simply do not. From our luxurious flowers to our exclusive giftsets or our tailored approach to customer service, we keep our offering unique. We are also recognizable for our plush, handmade velvet boxes that are reusable and available in a range of colours and sizes. Most boxed flower arrangements are made from cardboard, so we remain exclusive with our material.
What are the key values which helped you to overcome the roadblocks/challenges in your career? Tell us something about your memorable incident in your leadership.
Like all other businesses, we were hit by a curve ball when Covid emerged. Like many other small businesses, the global pandemic had a major impact on us. Businesses such as ours had to close their doors, and the ripple effect from that was felt throughout our supply chain long after the lockdown period. Always in the spirit of finding solutions, we opted to sell our vast stock of infinity roses and orchid plants, so we could still operate. When everyone else had closed their shops, we were determined to control the narrative by finding the right avenue to obtain a permit to be able to make deliveries during the height of the pandemic while always keeping the safety of our team in mind. We were motivated to bring some joy and create a mood enhancer for our clients during this difficult time. My leadership came through, working side by side with my team to ensure business losses stayed at a minimum so my entire team could be paid in full during the pandemic.
How do you see the company changing in two years, and how do you see yourself creating that change?
Our company’s goal in two years would be to create more opportunities in franchising the brand across the region.
What are the services/solutions or products offered by your company as par with the current industry standards? Tell us something about your upcoming products or services.
We have developed our services to include options that we feel would enhance the industry. Such as proposal packages, surprise birthday setups, and car unveilings, just to name a few.
Connect with Mandy McMechan on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat (@plaisir_cadeaux), Twitter, and Facebook.