Meet Steve Grigorchuk | Owner of House of Stemms

We had the good fortune of connecting with Steve Grigorchuk and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Steve, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
House of Stemms has been around since 1996 and I took over in 2004 when the previous owner suddenly passed away and his wife decided to sell it. Back then it was just a small flower stand at Horton Plaza mall and most of the business they had were mall shoppers and office workers stopping by to grab a bunch of fresh flowers on the way home. Business had a very good reputation in the community and I thought it was a good starting point for growing into full service flower shop serving the entire San Diego region. I’ve built the first website for the shop and things got rolling from that point on. We opened the actual retail store in Horton Plaza, started offering delivery, worked on weddings and fairly quick established House of Stemms as a premier florist in San Diego area.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
We pride ourselves on never being a part of the online floral wire services. All of the designs you find on our website are unique and original because they are our own. Once you pair original design with premium quality flowers you get a good number of repeat clients that stay with you for years to come. We’ve been fortunate (and thankful) to have some of our clients doing business with us for a couple of decades now. We are not the cheapest flower shop in town but we are very reasonable considering the quality of flowers that we use in our arrangements. Since most of our flowers are imported, we are able to offer many seasonal flowers year-round. We are blending creative floral design and beautiful fresh flowers to produce exquisite floral arrangements for weddings, corporate events, holidays, special occasions and beyond!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Honestly, I love everything that San Diego has to offer and it is difficult to pinpoint one place to visit or a restaurant to try without mentioning all of them. Usually when friends come to town we just jump in the car and drive up and down the coast stopping for pictures and delicious food. I will say one thing, most of my friends from other cities (not in California) rave about Mexican food they tried in San Diego.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
When I got into floral industry, I knew pretty much nothing about it. There were three ladies that worked part-time at the shop before I purchased it – Dani, Kate & Reina. All three of them stayed and worked with me. They helped me tremendously to understand the logistics and helped me with the basics of the floral trade. Once I’ve graduated to sophomore level in the industry, I’ve met Stephanie who is a very talented designer that has been working with flowers all her life. She is still with the company to this day, and I have to give her a lot of credit for a big part of our success over the years. And of course, my wife Olga. She has been more that understanding and supportive of me. When you are in the floral business you can pretty much forget about being home on-time for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and other major holidays. Your daily schedule around those holidays allows you only to come home for 4-5 hours before you need to return to the shop to finish the orders. So I do give her a lot of credit for putting up with my schedule over the last twenty years.

Website: deluxeflorist.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/houseofstemms/

Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/house-of-stemms-san-diego-3