A constant in Mikel McGee’s life has always been flowers.
Both her grandmas were avid gardeners. Her maternal grandmother had a beautiful flower garden where she grew peonies and roses. After school dances, she would save her flowers by putting them in her freezer.
She went on to receive an undergraduate degree at UW-Milwaukee in communication sciences and disorders. During that time, she took a flower arranging class because she needed additional credits to graduate. After graduation, she had the intent to become a speech pathologist.
“The universe had other plans for me. I had applied to different grad programs. I didn’t get into any of them. I was very discouraged and I kind of didn’t really know what was next,” McGee said “So I pivoted and I went for my master’s in Criminal Justice.”
She always had an interest in working with the community so she went the non-profit route but continued working with flowers. McGee would go to Trader Joe’s, make arrangements for friends and family and post them on her personal Instagram.
In 2019, she created an Instagram dedicated to her arrangements. Her and her sister went back and forth on what they should call the account and they came up with 414loral. Eventually, McGee built up the courage to apply for a pop-up to sell flowers to people other than her friends and family. So in December 2019, she sold her arrangements for the first time.
“It went great. It kind of gave me the courage to just keep going with it,” McGee said. “And so I still kept arranging out of my kitchen and I did not have a floral cooler or really anything. I would just put the arrangements in my fridge and keep it pushing.”
During this time she was working at the Sojourner Family Peace Center, a community non-profit that provides violence prevention and intervention services, along with a part-time job as a supervisor for a company that did supervised visitation for children in out-of-home placement. When Valentine’s rolled around she decided to sell arrangements.
“I did my first Valentine’s Day out of my kitchen. It was a very chaotic time because I stayed up all night making these arrangements,” McGee said. “And then I had to go to work the next morning and it was a lot.”
She did one more pop-up, then the pandemic hit. During that time, she was laid off from her part-time job so she had more time to focus on flowers. She found that it was a time when people really needed flowers, people couldn’t be with their loved ones in person but they could send them a bouquet.
“I feel so grateful to have been a part of, being able to kind of be that messenger of joy during such a time that it was just so unprecedented and so uncertain,” McGee said.
She continued working at Sojourner Family Peace Center but in 2021 her dad brought up the idea of opening up a shop.
“I was kind of hesitant, because to me, getting a brick and mortar felt like, okay, this is a real business now,” said McGee.
She loved her job and the impact it had on the community but decided to listen to her dad and opened up her first space on King Drive. King Drive sits in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood, which was the primary African-American economic and social hub of its time, Bronzeville brought all ethnicities together to celebrate African-American culture – highlighting jazz, blues and the arts between the early 1900s and the 1960s.
“I think just the history of Bronzeville, history of King Drive or Third Street, it was known for being a hub for black entrepreneurship, and that’s something that’s so special that I get to be a part of, a new generation of that,” she said.
She started hosting more community events and her business kept growing. Eventually, she needed a larger space and moved down the street from the original shop. There she hosts events like book clubs, build-your-own bouquet bars, flower design workshops and event collaborations with other Milwaukee businesses.
414loral also gives back to the community through their flower donation program – 414 flourish – where volunteers make arrangements with old wedding flowers that then get donated to different community partners. They’re intentional about how they use flowers by purchasing flowers from local farmers rather than shipping them out. The shop also focuses a lot on sustainability. They don’t use foam in any arrangements and compost their flower scraps with Compost Crusader.
“So they were giving us our statistics from May to, I guess now, and they said it was around 700 or so pounds that we’ve composted so far, which is insane,” McGee said. “When we hit a thousand pounds, I feel like we need to have a party or something because that’s incredible.”
414loral is intrinsic to the Milwaukee community. The shop even won a grant from Fizer and the Bucks for small businesses. The shop proudly displays a Bucks jersey that says “414loral.”
For McGee, 414loral is more than just a flower shop – it’s a space for the community to come together.
“It’s more than just a flower shop. It’s a space where people can come to connect and bring a little bit of joy into their lives with flowers.”
