Immerse Yourself In A Floral Experience With Teatro Verde
From the heart of Yorkville in Toronto to their new bohemian-themed website, Teatro Verde maintained its unique floral experience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the brick and mortar stores were forced to close, Shawn Gibson and Michael Pellegrino decided it’s time to take their business online to offer beautiful flowers and accessories remotely to their customers. With the help of the ShopHERE Program Powered by Google, their unique European shopping experience is now available online for everyone to enjoy.
Teatro Verde, or Green Theatre in Italian, was created in 1997 when Shawn and Michael combined their backgrounds in theater and gardening to deliver a sensory experience in their Yorkville store. Teatro Verde became a number one choice for floral artistry, luxury gifts and unique home accessories. Apart from their elegant pieces, Shawn and Michael also offer full-service floral decor for corporate events, weddings, birthdays and other celebrations. Their bespoke floral pieces decorated Christmas Trees of Four Seasons Hotel and Fleur de Villes in Toronto. Before COVID-19, their store approached every product as a piece of art for display, allowing customers to immerse themselves in a European journey. Being such a big part of their business, maintaining this immersive shopping atmosphere was the biggest challenge going online.
“I’m very glad we managed to convey online what our unique retail experience is inside the store,” said Shawn. “With the assistance of my Coordinator, Abdelrahman, I could develop and execute my website idea while also learning how to use the Shopify platform. He was very knowledgeable, quick to return questions and helped troubleshoot, I really appreciate his help.”
On their new website, they have options for ordering bouquets, silk floral pieces or booking events such as Floral Demo’s Wine Tasting. In addition to flowers, customers can also find a range of luxury candles, throw pillows and stationery like the beautiful European-style notebooks. Everything on the website conveys a common theme of bespoke immersive and visual experience of an Italian theatre.
When asked about the ShopHERE Program, Shawn was elated. “It is a great initiative as my skills are not to par with what’s required in this ever-changing eCommerce world and ShopHERE gave me a chance to understand, be taught and learn to administer our site. It was a very smooth process.” Moving forward, Shawn hopes to dig deeper into operating online, and learn more about marketing and advertising. To see their new online store, click this link. Teatro Verde’s Instagram page is already looking great and we cannot wait to see more, and their Yorkville store is now open so make sure to pay them a visit!
If you know anyone else who needs to complement their in-store experience with an online presence, check out the ShopHERE program requirements here.
Digital Main Street was created by the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) with direct support from the City of Toronto. DMS is also supported by a group of strategic business partners, including Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Meta, Intuit QuickBooks, Square, Lightspeed, Ebay and Canada Post.
A $42.5-million investment from FedDev Ontario brought together the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, Communitech, Invest Ottawa and the Ontario Business Improvement Area Association to expand the Digital Main Street Platform in order to support more businesses going digital as a response to the impacts of COVID-19 in Southern Ontario.
