Elevate Any Event With Oakville Balloons
Luisana M. Suarez and Rafael Osorio are the owners and operators of Oakville Balloons based in Oakville, Ontario. The business was founded in summer 2020, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, and was inspired by the need to celebrate their second child’s first birthday. Luisana and Rafael create beautiful balloon arrangements to elevate any celebration.
Oakville Balloons wants to bring joy and happiness to its customers by bringing artistic balloon compositions to the community. With a background in finance and engineering, the duo has created the perfect formula to create memories and outstanding events.
“We don’t sell balloons, we create personalized, sophisticated, and unique compositions by using the best quality balloons in the industry.”
Part of their journey to build their balloon business was to sell their compositions online. Luisana and Rafael built their very own online store with the help of the ShopHERE powered by Google program. In the program, they were paired with an eCommerce Coordinator to provide one-on-one support and guidance in building, as well as learning how to manage and market an online store.
“Our eCommerce Coordinator helped us create an online store for us beyond our expectations.”
Luisana and Rafael found their eCommerce Coordinator nice, caring, and professional from the start and had a wonderful experience. The ShopHERE program helped their budding small business to grow.
“Our business will be extremely benefited from it. It is a wonderful initiative and the way it is run makes it easier [for us to get online.]”
Their biggest challenge selling personalized products is customers experiencing challenges while ordering. However, each product page has a custom form on it, so that Luisana and Rafael can get as much detail as possible to fulfill the orders while leaving some room for their unique artistic expression.
Luisana and Rafael are excited for the opportunity to grow and succeed. The extended Shopify trial gave them the chance to finish and perfect their website before going live.
When asked for advice for other small business owners and artists looking to navigate eCommerce and digital marketing, Luisana and Rafael urge them to do it.
“It was a great experience and we highly recommend it.”
If you’re in Oakville and have a celebration coming up, why not elevate it with a custom balloon arrangement? You can shop Oakville Balloons at oakvileballoons.ca
If you’re a small business or artist and want to take Luisana and Rafael’s advice, you can sign up for the ShopHERE powered by Google program 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.
Continued investment from the Province of Ontario, through the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade (MEDJCT) has allowed the ongoing expansion the Digital Main Street Platform in order to support more businesses going digital across Ontario.
