Cory Carroll
Cory has a unique beginning in the industry of floral and event design.
Growing up in Alaska does not have its advantages to learning the life of event and floral design. When Cory was about 20 years old, he decided to fulfill some of his life long dreams of filming and Scuba diving. Cory enrolled at the New York Film Academy and the Commercial Diving Academy. He wanted to combine the two schools together to become an underwater cinematographer. As hard as it is to believe, going to school for underwater cinematography was the start to this new life.
Working in the Caribbean for a little under a year after graduating from dive school, Cory was called back to Alaska to be home with his grandfather as he was close to passing away. When the jobs for underwater filming were a tad hard to find in Nikiski, AK in the month of November, Cory had to find anything he could get. That happened to be a floral shop delivery driver. As the months went by Cory picked up a thing or two from the owner on how to make grocery store designs and how to process the flowers themselves. That was it! Cory was hooked. After being fired for undermining the owner after taking a wedding for the shop that the owner didnt want to take for unknown reasons to Cory, he decided it was time to move to Anchorage and start his own little business.
After borrowing $1200 from a friend and moving into the boiler room in the back of a shed in his church parking lot, Cory was off. Things were shaky to say the least, as Cory really didnt know how to design in the first place and there was no real store front to draw in customers.
Finally a break! A small rundown flower shop was selling and Cory decided to buy. With much more financial help from friends and family Cory bought into the business and started a much more normal retail flower shop. The business was slowly dying from the start and Cory had to do something to pay the bills, so he moved a few months later to the midtown area of Anchorage into a very small 600 square foot space to restart to business with a much higher end clientele in mind.
That was the best thing Cory ever did. From there on Cory kept picking up new client after new client until the spring of 2010. It was at that time Cory decided to make the leap into just doing event work. The retail shop was doing fine, but Cory couldnt run a retail shop and the event design company at the same time, so he chose the event design company. Quite frankly, you cant blame him its a lot more fun anyways.
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