Life is a bed of roses for small business owner Lisa LoVullo.

Ms. LoVullo, 48, is the owner of WILDTHING, a florist, gift shop and garden center located at 413 Fourth Street in Eastport.

The day the August issue of Floral Management – the respected industry bible for petal pushers – arrived in the sleek but homey little shop, Ms. LoVullo’s employees squealed with delight.

On the magazine’s cover, Ms. LoVullo’s face was smiling back at them. WILDTHING manager Doreen Helmly wasn’t aware the boss had turned into a cover girl, and employees Susan Beach, Sara McClayton and even her 12-year-old son and part-time worker, Drew LoVullo, didn’t know of her star turn.

Inside the glossy magazine, Ms. LoVullo is lauded for building more than 50 percent of her business in corporate sales. As a result, the business has experienced yearly growth of nearly 60 percent. Fewer than 15 percent of florists surveyed had corporate sales of 30 percent or higher.

The first three quarters of this year, her floral business has been 75 percent of sales, compared to 62 percent for all of 2005 – but the gift giving season is just days away.

“I love what I do,” she enthused. “We make people happy. No one is unhappy buying flowers or gifts. No one is unhappy getting flowers or gifts.”

Though her corporate colors are purple and lime green, her own favorites run toward fuchsia peonies, purple lilacs and green Bells of Ireland.

Founded in late 2000, the florist operated out of a studio in her home. Since April 2005, WILDTHING has occupied the 750-square foot ground floor, plus the small front porch and backyard of an old, renovated frame house.

The porch is decorated with colorful birdhouses, garden decor and other impulse buys. Inside, tasteful rustic containers and brightly colored sap buckets brim with fresh flowers delivered to her shop twice daily from around the world.

“You’ll never get an FTD bouquet from WILDTHING,” she promised.

A Baltimore native, she’s lived in Annapolis for 12 years. Years before, she served in the Peace Corps on staff at the Medical College of Grenada. At one point, based at the University of Maryland, she was also the first outreach coordinator in the country for the National Library of Medicine.

Her final corporate stint was with The Baltimore Sun. Ms. LoVullo started the paper’s plugged-in technology section as its library director, as well as the online Sunspot and Sunsource sections. Later, she served as director of Planning and Development for New Business.

In deciding to say it with flowers and eschewing the corporate life, she joked, “I chose a downwardly mobile career path.”

More seriously, she mused, “How could I leverage my core competencies to create incremental revenue and new lines of business? What I learned from doing that at The Sun is we are all human beings and we want to be respected. If we just take time to acknowledge people, it comes back tenfold.”

Though arranging asters could have been a disaster, Ms. LoVullo has deliberately focused on making corporate accounts a sizeable chunk of her flourishing business.

“We do flowers and gift baskets equally well,” she said. “Lots of companies use ready-made gift baskets.”

She ensures that each client receives an individually designed gift basket. Even if another client sees a basket and wants one just like it, she creates one more closely tailored to their corporate image.

“These are not just another Harry & David basket,” she sniffed. “I’ve never said, ‘This is what we have, do you want to buy it?’ If it’s an employees birthday, I’m not sending over a cake someone picked up at Giant that day.”

As part of her work with her list of 500 – and growing – business accounts, she “helps them create an annual budget and shows them how to shift a gift expense to a market expense.”

She flourished one basket made for the Anne Arundel County and Annapolis Visitor’s Bureau.

The basket is a sturdy, boat-shaped container made of woven wire. Wrapped in cellophane and dripping with blue, white and gold bows – the organization’s corporate colors – the vessel is packed with nautically themed goodies, including crisp, spicy Route 11 potato chips seasoned with Old Bay and Maryland fortune cookies.

The National Aquarium hired WILDTHING to provide gift baskets for a gala and Ms. LoVullo netted whale-sized compliments for the project. The “baskets” were 3-gallon fish tanks brimming with candy kebabs shaped like sea bass, fish-shaped cookies and other fishy treats.

When customers of a local financial advisor open an index-annuity investment, Ms. LoVullo delivers a Century safe stocked with gourmet goodies, many shaped like dollar signs.

If a parent opens a 529 college plan, the child receives a C.E.O. (Chief Executive Offspring) piggy bank with a congratulatory note tucked inside, signed by the thoughtful financial advisor.

People on American Handyman’s list received gift boxes in working toolboxes and Santa’s list for a cardiologist includes heart-shaped dark chocolates – considered heart-healthy.

When the wife of a local architect had a baby, a builder contacted her for a special gift – and she delivered. Ms. LoVullo found a posh jogging stroller and loaded it with gifts.

“I had to wheel it up the highest hill in Annapolis to his house,” she recalled. “He was just overjoyed. It was a fun project.”

Occasionally WILDTHING partners with other companies. A gift basket might include a beach, golf or ski getaway or a certificate for dinner at a top-rated restaurant.

When preparing an assignment, her staffers collect information on the clients or employees receiving the gift – likes, dislikes, hobbies and favorite colors. That data is used to personalize the gift.

“I treat each client as an individual. I try to make them look fabulous,” she explained. “There’s the WOW! factor when the gift or flowers arrive. You want the recipient to call the client ecstatic. A client wants that permanent memory attached to their name.”

WILDTHING has targeted the maritime events business. The company is the exclusive florist for Nautical Destinations, and handles some business for Watermark, Pintail, Admiral On The Bay, the Annapolis Chamber of Commerce and the Better Business Bureau.

“Lisa’s the best,” said financial planner and young mom Kristin Long, who was Ms. LoVullo’s first walk-in customer when the little shop opened last year. Ms. Long was selecting a bouquet of sunflowers for a friend’s birthday.

“She’s very personalized, she can do everything. My mom got her to do the arrangement for my baby shower and she’s done stuff for my corporate clients.”

Sandy Alan, at Hospice for the Chesapeake, noted, “I like working with Lisa because she gets into each event. What the purpose is, who is attending and, with Hospice, she is really sensitive to the mission.”

Ms. Alan has entrusted WILDTHING with the organization’s Holiday Open House at its new Annapolis office, its annual Beacon of Hope Gala and handling gifts for major sponsors that she described as “delightful, tasteful, beautiful and a little unusual.”

In addition to flowers and gift baskets, the company also decorates for holidays and themed events, and handles event planning. For companies wanting to make a splash early in the holiday season, she suggests gift giving at Thanksgiving instead of Christmas or Hanukkah. But, she’s handled panicky last-minute clients on Dec. 23, too.

“I never, ever say ‘No’ to anyone and I exceed their expectations every time. They don’t want to hear ‘No’ or how much trouble it will be, they want it done.”

She also has a small, custom garden center business. “We don’t compete with Home Depot or Homestead,” she said.

Claiming her wild days are long gone, and that she’s really a wallflower, Ms.LoVullo, said, she was originally planning to call the company Wildflower, “but I knew I would get into other things besides flowers. I was brainstorming and said Wild Thing as a joke and it stuck. It’s been a great marketing tool. People approach me at networking meetings and ask, “What is WILDTHING?” Almost everyone that finds us online either locally or nationally tells us they selected us because of our name. We try to live up to our name through imaginative design. The downside – people are forever singing the song to me.

“Ironically our new containers are trugs which I believe was the name of the band that did ‘Wild Thing.’”

Close. It was The Troggs.

Copyright © 2006 The Capital, Annapolis, Md.