Meet Anna Affy And Michael Sychev | Florist and entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anna Affy And Michael Sychev and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anna Affy, what matters most to you?
We have a real desire to bring the ideas of our customers to life while working with all kinds of budgets. At the same time, we are confident in our vision and our creative, artistic approach that makes us stand out . Floral arrangements are very intricate and a personal, subjective matter, so the synergy between customer vision and our expertise and approach is the ultimate challenge.

The most important factor is the pleasure that we get from our work and the creative process behind it. We never get a feeling of a mundane work that bores us out and we truly enjoy what we do. The feedback that we get for our services is a testament and appreciation of our work. In general, we are very grateful that we have the opportunity to create something wonderful in such a wonderful place as Los Angeles.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
We would like to tell the story of our brand.

Anya used to be an amateur florist driven by her inner passion and she really wanted to open a store for bouquets and arrangements of natural flowers. And Michael is an entrepreneur with a few successful projects behind his sleeve who immediately saw the huge potential in the passionate heart and creative ideas. We had no experience in the US, limited knowledge of the English language, but Anya has always felt that flowers and the art that can be made was her joy, was what she wanted to connect her life with.

– I started looking for a job as a florist in the immigrant community. I found a great place shortly, and after my experience in the beautiful salon I gained strength and assertiveness that I am ready to do my own thing.

We came up with the Mishann floristics brand, which is a combination of our names: Misha and Anya – MishAnn – a testament to how we put our heart and soul into it. Misha himself came up with the logo and all the key design elements. This is our baby, the project of our lifetime.
Initially, we came up with the idea of ​​making unique compositions in wooden boxes, that were crafted by Michael from scratch. I remember how we rented a part of the studio from a friend, bought a used refrigerator, that gave us a series of problems later. The development of the website also did not go as well, because we did it ourselves; advertising did not work, and the whole ordeal even ended up putting strain on our relationship. After all this effort, not much came out of it. We counted our losses, sold the refrigerator, and put the dream on hold. We were very upset.

After giving it a lot of thought, Anya took a full-time job in a florist’s shop to improve her skills and gain some extra experience. She worked there for six months and realized that having a permanent job was a great opportunity to invest in creating a portfolio for the floral business. Anya contacted her friends saying that she would do any kind of job for free – organizing photo shoots, offering free design of music videos background and other projects. After collecting portfolio for the 12 Instagram posts, we got our motivation back and were ready to give it another, revengeful try. And now, after our company has been up and running for a year, we can confidently say that we have gotten on our feet and are moving in the right direction.

Ideally, we would like to teach our craft and develop courses or open a school – to use all the accumulated experience to train all passionate florists around the world. Still, we think that experience is the most important teacher, but at the very beginning we had so many questions and could not find the answers. I had to try something at random, ask something or peep from other florists; or just come up with something and there were obviously many failures.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I am grateful to two flower shops in Los Angeles who accepted me into their team at the very beginning. Mostly Pink Clover and owner Inna. Thanks to her faith in me, I began to believe in myself even more. And of course, for strengthening my skills and my development in the flower business, I am grateful to Floral n5. This salon shaped me completely, creating favorable conditions for the development of me as an individual entrepreneur.

Instagram: @mishann.floristics