The flowers in this shop are blooming, but business isn’t necessarily booming.
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Susana Martins, the owner of the Unanderra Flower Shop, is “doing well” at the moment – but she’d love to be “doing much, much better”.
“Everybody’s watching their pennies. I’m a florist; I’m not a necessity,” Ms Martins told the Mercury.
“I’m a luxury and it’s our little businesses, the luxuries, that get cut first and we really do feel it.
“If we haven’t got the money coming in we can’t pay our bills; if we can’t pay our bills we can’t pay our employees; if we can’t pay our employees we have to let people go.”
After a busy Mother’s Day, Ms Martins has experienced a lull in trading out of her Princes Highway shopfront.
Tax time – a period when people are more focused than ever on their finances – has always been difficult.
Ms Martins, who has owned the florist for a little more than two years, said it was just part of the business’ “unpredictable” nature.
“I don’t have many people working for me for that reason because this is the type of business [where] there’s no certainties … I can be extremely busy one day and I could be almost dead [quiet] the next day,” she said.
The unpredictability of running small operations like the Unanderra Flower Shop wasn’t lost on Labor’s federal spokeswoman for small business and financial services, Katy Gallagher.
Senator Gallagher, who was in Wollongong on Wednesday as part of a nationwide tour, said the varied work done by small business owners meant it was hard for them to “speak with a unified voice.”
“When people watch their pennies it’s small businesses that actually suffer because they’re the add-ons, the things that you don't have to spend money on, that people start cutting back on and that has an affect on everybody,” Senator Gallagher said.
Confidence in the economy, business growth and cash flow management were among the concerns raised by small business owners across the country, she said.
While consumer confidence might be lacking, Ms Martins remained upbeat.
“I love what I do, I’m a small business, I make people happy,” she said.
“I see someone walking out of here with a smile on their face, or I go and deliver a wedding and I’ve made their day basically.”
Small businesses employ 45 per cent of Australia’s private sector workforce and Whitlam MP Stephen Jones said they were “the key to the future”.
“The next big thing is not going to be another huge business here in the Illawarra, it’s going to be lots of little ones driving employment [and] driving the prosperity of our region,” Mr Jones said.