Serbio Uzcategui founder and ceo of piropo and Morgan & Grand

my story

I always heard that the most radical form of travel, and sometimes the one with the most expectation, was migration. At the beginning of 2017 I arrived to New York. The trip was calm, but the reception was unsettling because of the cold weather and the undecided horizon that awaited me. I arrived with the will to have an impact on this new society. I quickly realized that destiny is in us, and everyone assumes it according to the power of their ideal and their greater or lesser capacity for dreaming, focus and will. 

A couple of months later just at the dawn of spring, my adventure began, as a waiter attending parties. Trays and plates met instantly the flowers. Almost without realizing it, after each catering event with its tones and colors, I saw myself filling my New York pockets with hopes and dreams, where handling the art of floral arrangements was the only thing I longed for. Migration ceased to be the place where tears burn. On

Serbio gifting fresh cut flowers to customer

 

Immediately the shade of the friendly tree appeared. My apprenticeship in floral art began in Greenwich (Connecticut), then the Hamptons. They were intense months of comings and goings, of errands, and efforts of all kinds, without any rest. But always with strong will and clear purpose. I told myself YES, I CAN.

In January 2020 I decided to start my own company named after the streets where I rented my first workspace, Morgan & Grand. It is a sale of flowers for supermarkets. Colors and textures like perfumed trophies, a waste of leaves, petals and aromas was what we brought to the homes of many people. Love and gallantry were the kind invitation to enjoy the magic of our bouquets. And this happened amid the COVID 19 pandemic. Because every crisis is nothing more than an opportunity to create, to grow.

As the flowers passed from hand to hand, the rose embodied for me the sweetest of springs; amid the sculpture of the stems, sweet melodies resounded from the bouquets. The gladiola, the divine fern, the sensual anthurium, the amorous myrtle, the weeping whiteness of the lily, the blue hydrangea, were born of my own art. Unfolding the floral art I told to myself, the only life we have is eternal. I came to such a conclusion in secret among the autumnal nuances of the year two thousand and twenty. That day I understood that emigrating was an extreme activity. I found myself in New York as if in a battlefield. The road was narrow, but the horizon looked infinite. I have been walking along the sinuous path for four years. I have an apparently complex mission in my hands: TO SUCCEED. Today I have enough reasons to feel gratitude with the city, with all the wonderful human beings I have met. To project ourselves into eternity we must resist the decisive instant in which we live.

From this emotional and professional position, Piropo Flowers was born. It is my first flower shop, inside the Little Spain market in Hudson Yards. If you ask me what piropo is, I answer: It is a compliment, tossing flowers to others. It is to fill life with colors, bringing joy through textures and fragrances. Piropo Flowers is living flesh, the sincere expression of a young soul, of a thirst for infinite illusions. And that satisfies me more than anything else. Understanding the context in which one works --based on ethics, trust and the closest affections between company, family, and workers-- is strategically beautiful for personal satisfaction and business sustainability.

You have to want something in this world and devote yourself to it. After all, we are what we want. You must give yourself to something: a dream, a trade, a business, a job, or a social ideal. The truth is that by leaving the country, by leaving the warmth of the family roof, we have not abandoned the Earth. On the contrary, we have opened new paths towards this complex source of encounters which is New York. To the city and its people, I dedicate my best PIROPOS.

 

Giving vanda orchids
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