Brent Slagle, owner of Flowers on Broad, first fell in love with the floral industry as teen. “I was sixteen years old when I went to work with my aunt and uncle, who owned one of the largest florists in the state,” remembers Brent. “I worked there through college and fell in love with it then.”
After college, Brent worked as a respiratory therapist for twenty-six years before turning back to his love of flowers. “I stepped out and opened my own business in 2014, petrified because I took out a lot of my savings to do it,” shares Brent. “The first year, we were slow - of course. After that first year, it picked up and we’ve been running ever since.” With the store front open six days a week and one hundred and twenty weddings a year, Brent and his team stay busy.
It’s his attention to detail and love for pleasing people that not only make Brent very good at what he does but are also what he loves about working with people and flowers. “Our business is based on every emotion and we’ve supplied flowers for all of them,” says Brent. “I want to make people happy - whether it’s through a wedding, or if it’s through a funeral, I want the family of the deceased to know that they gave their family the best and the prettiest and I want to make them proud.”
The company tag line of “not your ordinary florist” fits perfectly. “Our design style is different from anyone else in the area,” says Brent. “We do more current designs – we’re not the old-fashioned florist. We try not to do anything that is ordinary. We want to stay current and new and pushing the limit a little bit.”
“We’ve hung six hundred feet of fresh garland from the ceilings of the Old Medical College and we’re the only ones who have been allowed to do anything like that,” adds Brent. “We hang eight-foot greenery chandeliers from tents and ceilings. We do things that most other people don’t do.”
For a wedding at Pine Knoll Farms, Brent says he and his team even surprised themselves with a beautifully lavish, but complicated, hanging greenery and candle installation. “The hanging installation was twenty-four feet long. It had about sixty candles hanging from the bottom of it and another forty candles lining the table below. It was something we’d never done before.” Brent and his team had to build the framework and assemble the greenery and flowers in three eight-foot sections for transportation to the location.
The Flowers on Broad team strives to provide exactly what each customer seeks when they walk through the door. “Everything we do is custom and it’s what the customer asks for,” says Brent. “We don’t keep a cooler full of flowers that have been made for three days sitting there. However, you can come in, tell us what you want, wait fifteen minutes, and you can leave with it.”
Brent acknowledges that it’s not only a team effort, but a family affair. He says, “My family and faith are what got us to where we are, and they come before anything. We help each other out anytime. My mother, who was the manager at my aunt and uncle’s business, is now my bookkeeper. I have three family members who work six days a week with me and the extended family is on call 24/7 when I need them in a pinch. It’s not a one-person job, it takes a team of talented people to pull all of it off and we’ve got that here.”
As a full-service florist, Flowers on Broad serves and delivers to the surrounding Augusta area for all occasions including weddings, funerals, birthdays, and “just because”. They also offer fruit and gourmet baskets, balloon bouquets, plants, and have even done garden installations for homes.
Flowers on Broad has been voted Cyber City’s Best Florist for 2018, 2019, & 2020. Visit www.flowersonbroad.com for a gallery of work and call 706-261-8555 to have Flowers on Broad add beauty to your special occasion.
