As Valentine’s Day approaches, new owner of downtown Greeley’s iconic Mariposa Plants and Flowers says she’s ready for the challenge

Danielle DeVore, new owner of Mariposa Plants and Flowers, worked under Pam Bricker for 23 years. Courtesy photo.

By Dan England

Danielle DeVore assumed command of Mariposa Plants and Flowers on Jan. 1, and one of her biggest tests is quickly approaching. If you have a spouse, a significant other or a love interest, you probably know what it is. 

Yep. Valentine’s Day is the biggest day of the year for a flower store, rivaled only by Mother’s Day, and she won’t have Pam Bricker, who she worked under for 23 years and who founded the store 37 years ago, by her side this time. But she will have two longtime staff members who also spent 20-plus years working for Bricker, and she will have the experience she gained after Bricker took over as executive director of the Downtown Development Authority in 2011. Bricker, in fact, said she felt OK about leaving the day-to-day management of the store to her employees because they’d worked with her for so long. 

“It sort of forced me to figure it out and run it the way I wanted,” DeVore said. “That was really good training.”

For years, Bricker still showed up for the holidays and worked late into the evening, like her employees, but she won’t do that this year. Bricker plans to travel in between maintaining duties as the co-founder of the Greeley Blues Jam with her husband, Al, and her work with the Greeley Creative District and other projects. She scheduled one of her vacations on Valentine’s Day weekend. 

“I did that on purpose, actually,” Bricker said. “They’ll be fine.” 

Bricker retired from the DDA in 2019 and hoped to do the same with the store until COVID-19 hit. A pandemic is never the time to change hands. Their good name, Bricker’s community involvement and their prominent location in downtown Greeley, where they’ve sat on the corner of 8th and 8th since 2008, saved them, she said. They closed down for a bit but gambled on reopening for Mother’s Day two months after the outbreak. Employees wore masks and worked their tails off, and an outpouring of delivery orders — the staff just left the flowers on the porch, much like food services — rescued them. 

“I didn’t want to sell the store then because no one would buy it,” Bricker said. “I knew there was a future. We just had to get through it.” 

DeVore said she will keep that name — “it’s a fixture for Greeley,” she said —  but wants to update the logo, work closely with local growers to reduce the business’ carbon footprint and convert the backroom storage space into a place for events and classes such as repotting and wreath making. 

Bricker founded Mariposa after leaving the United Way of Weld County. She didn’t want to do the director’s job: She preferred working with the agencies (a highlight was helping the Weld Food Bank get off the ground). She started a plant caretaking business with a close friend, and after they were asked many times if they sold flowers by the employees of the businesses they worked in, they hired a florist, and their business took off.

She took over several years later and hired four employees that stayed with her for two decades. Two of them, Carolyn Rohrig and Deb Hayley, will stay with DeVore. The fourth, Steph Sipres, decided to open her own flower store. Even as soon as 2008, after they moved downtown and Bricker began to get more involved with the DDA in an effort to change downtown’s fortunes (and help her business in the process), Bricker talked to DeVore about running the place. She knew DeVore because she was friends with Bricker’s son, Colin, and had been since they were in high school together. 

“She was putting the idea in my head,” DeVore said. “She really wanted to get the business settled and in a good place before she turned it over.”

The best thing Bricker did, DeVore said, was take that DDA job, but she learned quite a bit from Bricker before then.

“The thing I learned the most was how to take care of customers and the community,” DeVore said. “She was very generous with donations and built the name around something more than a flower shop.”

Bricker said DeVore had “the whole package”: She is a talented floral designer and understands the business side as well. 

“She’s great with computers and customers, everything, really,” Bricker said. 

DeVore is grateful her staff will stay with her, especially during the busy weekends such as Valentine’s Day. She can’t imagine it any other way. 

“It’s like a little family here,” she said.