BloomBack Pays It Ahead With Flowers To Assist The Much less Privileged

Every year we honor mothers around the world on Mother's Day, which is usually the second Sunday in May.

With their nurturing and self-sacrificing properties, mothers are the backbone of the family. You are our greatest cheerleader, the glue that holds the family together, the person we ask for advice, and our moral compass that teaches us how to tell right from wrong.

For Hazel Kweh, co-founder and CEO of the social and flower company BloomBack, her mother also serves as business inspiration.

Learn compassion from her mother

Hazel (right) and her mother / Photo credit: Hazel Kweh

Hazel grew up in a single-parent, low-income family, and her two siblings fought hard for health.

Her sister Faith is partially disabled – struggling with retinitis pigmentosa, a group of rare genetic disorders that affect her hearing and eyesight – while her brother has depression.

Her mother single-handedly raised the three children with a poorly paid street vendor job. She struggled to make ends meet, which made Hazel disapprove of her own father.

She often blamed her father for the broken family, but her mother often reminded her to "be kind and forgive him". She had finally come to forgive him three years ago when religion helped her to see clearly what her mother had taught her: kindness and forgiveness.

Although she was not financially well, her mother repeatedly showed care and concern for the disadvantaged.

As a street vendor who ran her own noodle shop at the time, she struggled to make ends meet (but) she had a big heart and treated those who couldn't afford to eat regularly.

– Hazel Kweh, co-founder and CEO of BloomBack

This selfless quality of her mother became an important core value for Hazel, both in her personal life and in her career.

A social movement to deliver flowers to seniors and patients

To solve her family's financial problems, Hazel took on several jobs while juggling school to feed herself.

After graduation, she worked as a stewardess at Singapore Airlines before becoming a financial planner at Prudential.

During her time at Prudential, she received several awards, including the prestigious Million Dollar Round Table in recognition of her outstanding performance, and quickly rose to a leadership role.

Hazel (left) and her sister Faith / Image Credit: Hazel Kweh

However, her sister Faith struggled with depression because of the difficulty in finding a job and because the marriage was broken.

To cheer her up, Hazel brought her to a friend's wedding, where Faith fell in love with the decorative flowers.

I wondered what else I could do to encourage my sister when my friend suggested that I take flowers home after the wedding to make them useful.

– Hazel Kweh, co-founder and CEO of BloomBack

The sisters turned the wedding flowers into bouquets and distributed them door-to-door to seniors who lived alone in rental apartments on Beach Road to cheer them up.

Distributing flowers to elderly people living alone / Photo credit: BloomBack

This spontaneous initiative from them helped Faith to be happy and happy again. When Faith recognized the positive difference that flower therapy can make for people's lives, she decided to devote herself to floristry.

For her, however, floristry is more than just a flower arrangement activity. She wanted to use it to help other marginalized women like her single mother and sister.

This inspired her to found the Bloom It Forward social movement, where she converts donated flowers from weddings and events into bouquets so that they can be delivered to hospitals and nursing homes.

Helping other single mothers and disabled people

A few months after the start of the social movement, Hazel quit her job and was a co-founder of BloomBack in February 2017.

BloomBack is a social company and an online florist company that sells gifts from preserved flowers.

Photo credit: BloomBack

While Hazel's mother was initially shocked by her decision to quit her full-time job, she became extremely supportive when she learned that BloomBack wanted to help marginalized people.

According to Hazel, there are many marginalized women with limited skills and underqualifications in Asia (including Singapore), making it difficult for them to find suitable employment opportunities.

These women include single low-income mothers, abused housewives, older women and ex-convicts. Unfortunately, social and economic exclusion have led to a lack of self-confidence and they also live in fear and insecurity.

Because of her mother's plight, she wanted to help women in a similar situation by arranging flowers to train them to be flower craftsmen.

With their newly acquired skills in the field of flower arrangements, they can take on ad hoc jobs in addition to their full-time employment during peak periods such as Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.

The floral products created by these trained florists are then sold on the BloomBack online platform.

Hazel's mother is also currently working as a florist at BloomBack to support the business since she left her peddler job.

With her mother on board, Hazel opened a full retail store at The Vertex and added a physical store to her online presence.

Give something back to society

In addition to Hazel, BloomBack has four other full-time employees, including Faith, who leads the operations and volunteer team.

"Queen bees" or beneficiaries who work as sales staff on a commission basis receive individual codes that they can pass on to customers who shop with them.

One of the queen bees, Yvonne, partnered with BloomBack in August 2017 when her husband was released.

Despite her poor education and limited skills, the mother of two can now improve her family's income thanks to the company's direct sales training.

Photo credit: BloomBack

She could also choose to offer her own flower creations for sale on the BloomBack platform after completing the flower arrangement training to generate additional income.

10 percent of every purchase on the BloomBack website goes to a specific purpose or to BloomBack programs, while another 10 percent goes to the queen bees as a commission.

I want women to have a passive income. This motivates them to find their own customers and to track future purchases.

– Hazel Kweh, co-founder and CEO of BloomBack

Because of this unique business concept, BloomBack received financial support through a grant from the Singapore Center for Social Enterprise.

Today BloomBack is finding ways to give something back to society through nonprofits like YWCA from Singapore, the Breast Cancer Foundation and Daughters of Tomorrow.

One of her business milestones was working with the Breast Cancer Foundation as a flower organizer for her 20th anniversary.

Another memorable collaboration is with the Parkway Cancer Center (PCC) as part of a Community Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative that bought pink gifts for media partners and influencers, as well as flowers from BloomBack, to give to cancer patients.

PCC also sponsored a free mammography test for every gift set purchased on the platform.

A special mother's day this year

Hazel's mother / Photo credit: BloomBack

In recent years, Hazel and her mother have had fun activities at home every Mother's Day.

She said that due to her hectic career and lifestyle in her previous jobs (as a stewardess and financial planner), she rarely was allowed to spend a lot of time with her mother other than sharing a simple meal.

Now that she's in the gift business, they're busy whenever there's a special occasion. That's why Hazel plans to plan ahead and celebrate Mother's Day in advance.

We celebrated Mother's Day three days earlier by doing a facial together at home! It was very unforgettable and my mother said that it was a very special Mother's Day for her.

– Hazel Kweh, co-founder and CEO of BloomBack

While this year's Mother's Day will be a different kind of celebration for us as we all stay at home, use this time as an opportunity to spend time with your family in your own home.

Instead of the usual Mother's Day meal in a fancy restaurant, it can be just as valuable to just share a homemade meal.

Selected image source: Hazel Kweh / BloomBack