SCRANTON \u2014 A 30-plus-year career in the floral business started by chance for Bern Giovannucci.<\/p>\n
While working for Helen Schwartz Gifts across the street, she noticed a sign in the window of Greg Novak Floral Design on Penn Avenue seeking help around the shop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something I did on my own,\u201d she said. \u201cI came over and said, \u2018Would you give me a chance?\u2019 He did, and that started the whole journey. It\u2019s been a fun journey and sometimes a crazy journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Novak became sick and passed away, his parents didn\u2019t want to continue the business, allowing Giovannucci to take over and rebrand it as B\u2019s Floral Design in 2005, she said. More than two decades later, she\u2019s retiring.<\/p>\n
Leslie Collins, president and CEO of Scranton Tomorrow, a nonprofit community and economic development organization, stressed Giovannucci had a deep impact on the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has been an absolute staple in the downtown for decades, and she has been incredibly community-minded,\u201d Collins said. She recalled a special item Giovannucci made to reward proprietors for keeping their shops in pristine condition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell over a decade ago, she crafted an (award) that we would give to businesses for going above and beyond in the cleanliness and beautification of their business,\u201d Collins said.\u00a0\u201cShe created this amazing golden broom that people didn\u2019t want to hand back over to us, to pass on to their neighbor, because it was so incredibly beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Giovannucci, 74, looks forward to reconnecting with some\u00a0old hobbies and traveling to spend quality time with loved ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time for me to take care of me,\u201d she said. \u201cWe went through it all \u2014 the holidays, the weddings, the graduations. It was fun, and I love what I\u2019m doing, but after 30 years, I\u2019m tired. I just want to have the time to do the things I love to do. I\u2019d love to go horseback riding again for the first time in 35 years, and visit my brother in North Carolina and friends in Florida and Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Giovannucci strove to connect with each person who walked through the door and was always willing to share some love and kindness by providing the less fortunate with a bottle of water on a hot day or a pair of gloves for their ailing hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get to know their names and I get to know the person,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then when you see their face coming in, they\u2019re smiling and they\u2019re happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Giovannucci plans to remain in the shop until around mid-March as she conducts a retirement sale, attempting to unload an assortment of vases, seasonal decorations and more.<\/p>\n
Seeing someone smile \u2014 especially someone experiencing the loss of a loved one \u2014 after receiving a flower delivery always left Giovannucci with a sense of fulfillment and joy.<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing that you just made somebody\u2019s day, that\u2019s the best part of this job,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the volume of customers started to decrease in recent years, Giovannucci said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of my customers were the older, more traditional customers, and they\u2019re slowly dying,\u201d she said. \u201cI had one guy who would call all the time and he would order for himself, his sister, his neighbor, and his aunt or cousin \u2014 he\u2019d order four or five pieces every holiday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Giovannucci won\u2019t miss dealing with rising costs and technology-related issues around the shop, but she will miss one thing: the people.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy customers that I\u2019ve had, I appreciate so much because they\u2019ve stuck by me and supported me through the years,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve only met some over the phone, but we\u2019ve had great conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2014 A 30-plus-year career in the floral business started by chance for Bern Giovannucci. While working for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[104,114,14334,899,1201,14335,14333],"class_list":{"0":"post-21968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bern","8":"tag-bern","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-lackawanna-county","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-scranton","14":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}