After discovering her passion for flowers while working as a yacht stewardess, Maja Bergstrom created Breezy Blooms, a company offering yacht-tailored floristry, floral education courses for crew, and consulting services. Drawing on her firsthand knowledge of what’s missing from the yachting floral scene, Bergstrom aims to fill those gaps while empowering interior crew and creating a community centered on a love of flowers. How did you get into yachting? It was a combination of the passion for travel I think a lot of crew share and then my professional experience in cultural exchange. I was in exchange programs before, so I was very keen on the idea of working abroad, and then COVID hit. That is what kind of pushed me into yachting because I quickly realized when a lot of travel-related things shut down, yachting was different. What is Breezy Blooms? For crew, it is the first ever GUEST-accredited training provider that solely specializes in yachting floristry education. We have a variety of courses all related to floristry at sea. Apart from the training aspect, we also offer freelance floral services on board and on land, and farm to vessel provisioning too. That makes Breezy Blooms a bit of an all-around yacht florist trade platform. Why floristry? I took some time off yachting because there was this passion that arose throughout my first few years of yachting — flowers. I took six months off yachting to go land based and I was given an opportunity to intern with a florist (Spencer Falls) in Los Angeles. I realized that a lot of the things I like to do are creative in some way. I have always enjoyed working with my hands. I think there’s something different about flowers; it’s very temporary, and that itself I enjoy because it is a forced reminder to enjoy the moment while it lasts. In a very fast-paced world nowadays, that is a nice reminder. I had very little experience with flowers before I was crew, I just happened to be noticed by my chief stewardess on my first vessel. She said, “You will be the flower girl,” and that just meant maintaining the flowers and making the flowers for the tables on a smaller yacht. That was what essentially sparked the joy. How did you create Breezy Blooms? When I worked with this florist, I thought there has to be a gap in land floristry and the reality at sea — that’s where the idea for Breezy Blooms came in. I didn’t know back then exactly what it was going to be or how it was going to unfold, it’s evolving still, and I think it always will, but it definitely has become clear that I’m able to offer services that a regular florist won’t. What made sense was to fill that gap with educational services. I wanted something to be educational but accessible on board. Sometimes [I would be] sitting way out at sea, thinking, “I need to create a hanging installation for tonight’s dinner, but how can I do that and what can I hang it from?” All of those things are in our online course. What were some of the biggest challenges while creating Breezy Blooms? Things don’t go as fast as you think they will — whether that’s partnerships, client contracts, creating a course, or creating a curriculum. I, like many entrepreneurs, like for things to go fast. Another challenge was that I was alone for a long time. I did everything myself for a year and a half and even when the business isn’t even operating, before the business has clients, there’s a lot to build. What are some of Breezy Blooms’ biggest success stories? I’m able to do this full time now and that’s a big thing that I’m very grateful for. The second thing is being GUEST accredited — that has been a nice success story. Thirdly, to start curating a bit of a team. That really is invaluable, and it is so important to have the right people. What’s your advice for crewmembers looking to start a business? It should come from something that they truly enjoy doing or see the need for and strongly believe in the idea. It’s easy to think that building a business will create freedom, but it’s actually the opposite in a way, at least in the beginning. Are you willing to put down a lot of personal time into something that’s probably not going to be easy at first? I would also suggest testing it out while you’re still on board, not because I don’t believe in you, but because it’s worth seeing if you enjoy it as much as you think you will. What was the biggest difference in no longer being a crewmember and living on land? As a social person, it was lonely at times. I love having people around, so I had no problem with the shared living on board. Then coming to land, even if you work what’s considered a long day on land, it really isn’t as much as you sometimes would work as yacht crew on charter, so there was a lot of time to fill. But mostly that camaraderie of your crew, I miss that at times. What does the future of Breezy Blooms look like? Keep creating. Polishing our portfolio of courses that we offer because we have a good base now with accredited on board and in-person courses. I hope that we’ll be able to truly reach globally with the delivery of flowers.