An Unexpected Beginning

Bella’s Flower Shop was never part of my plan.

Before flowers, I was in real estate. I bought properties, renovated them and sold them. Then the 2008 real estate market crashed, and almost overnight, the business I had built came to a stop. I was left with properties I couldn't sell and no clear idea of what I was going to do next. So, I did what a lot of people did back then. I went on Craigslist.

One day, I came across an ad for a tiny flower shop for sale in the Bronx. I knew absolutely nothing about flowers. I wasn't a florist. I had never designed an arrangement in my life. But the price was low enough to make me curious. My mother came with me to see the shop. I remember being unsure of myself, but she kept encouraging me: You can do this. She believed I could make something out of that little shop before I did. So, in May 2010, I bought it. And Bella's Flower Shop was born.

Why Bella's?

I named the shop after my niece, Isabella. The original Bella's was tiny—roughly 150–200 square feet—and the business wasn't exactly thriving when I took it over. But it was mine. I learned the flower business from the ground up. I worked, experimented, made mistakes, learned what customers wanted and slowly built the business. I also learned something about myself along the way:

I wasn't the florist. I was the entrepreneur.

My strengths were marketing, advertising, e-commerce and developing new products. So rather than trying to become something I wasn't, I surrounded myself with talented floral designers and focused on building Bella's. It worked. Within two years, we had outgrown that tiny shop.

Growing Up in the Bronx — and Growing Bella's Here

In 2012, Bella's moved into a much larger storefront on West Fordham Road, where we're still located today.

The Bronx isn't simply where our business happens to be located. It's home.

My family immigrated to the United States from Honduras, and I grew up in the Bronx. I watched my parents work incredibly hard and make sacrifices to build a life here for our family. That has always stayed with me.

I wanted Bella's to become the kind of business that showed something beautiful, creative and successful could be built right here in our own community. Over the years, we've tried to keep pushing ourselves creatively. Bella's became known locally for fresh flowers arranged in our signature boxes and later for preserved roses designed to last a year or longer.

But through all the changes, we've remained a real neighborhood flower shop.

Then My Best Friend Joined Me

There's another person who has been part of the Bella's story for a very long time: my best friend, Erika.

Erika and I met at our local church more than 25 years ago. We share similar stories. We both immigrated from Honduras, grew up in the Bronx and attended Baruch College—but our careers went in completely different directions. I went into real estate and eventually flowers. Erika went into banking and became a bank manager.

For years, though, she was never very far from Bella's. During the craziness of Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, Erika would come help me at the shop. We talked for years about what it would be like to work together. Eventually, we stopped talking about it and did it. Our strengths couldn't be more different. I'm drawn to marketing, advertising, e-commerce, ideas and product development. Erika is exceptional at organization, logistics, management and operations. Those differences turned out to be exactly what the business needed.

More Than 16 Years Later

Today, I sometimes look around Bella's and think about that little Craigslist ad. A business I knew nothing about. A tiny flower shop. A mother telling her daughter, “You can do this.” And somehow, here we are more than 16 years later. Bella's has survived recessions, a pandemic, exhausting Valentine's Days, Mother's Days that seemed like they would never end, mistakes, changes, growing pains and more flower stems on the floor than I could ever count. We've also had the privilege of being there for thousands of moments in people's lives—birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, new babies, apologies, celebrations and goodbyes. That's what I've come to understand about this business. We sell flowers, but the flowers are almost never really the point. There's always a person behind them.

Designed Here. Delivered Here.

Bella's is still a real local Bronx flower shop. We're not an online company that takes your order and passes it along to an unknown florist.

We are the florist.

Our flowers are made right here in our Bronx shop by our team and delivered by local drivers.

You can order from us online, call us, or walk through our doors on West Fordham Road.

And if you do, you're dealing with the same business that started in 2010 with a Craigslist ad, a tiny flower shop, and a mother who believed it could become something more.

She was right.

Bella's Flower Shop
288 W. Fordham Road
Bronx, NY 10468
347-577-5300

Hablamos Español.