For years creating beautiful bouquets of flowers had simply been a hobby for Yvonne Gibson as she made special gifts for family and friends.
The mum-of-one had never considered turning her talent for greenery into a full-time job.
But as the global downturn in the oil and gas industry continued, the 57-year-old decided it might be time to try something new after encouragement from her husband and son.
After 15 years with oil major BP at its North Sea operations, she decided it was a good time to take up the offer of voluntary redundancy and embark on a fresh challenge.
Yvonne created Von Petal, based in Kingswells.
She said: “I started the business in October 2015. My official leave date was the 31st of October but I finished before Christmas because I had some leave still to take. I’m quite good self-
discipline wise and good at routine. It’s good because you can diversify a bit when you’re doing it from home.
“In one way it’s good, because if it’s a nice day you can go and hang up the washing and do something else when you’re working. That has worked out well for me. I do try and keep structure to my day.
“It was my son who said to me, ‘mum what would you get if you got a redundancy package?’. I told him it was quite a generous package I would get because I had 15 years of service.
“My son said why didn’t I think about doing my flowers and told me to follow my heart instead of my head for a change.”
Mrs Gibson started working full-time when she was 17 as an office junior and has held a number of roles, including positions at BT and a number of oil service companies before she landed her last role with BP.
She said she could “understand why” staffing had to be decreased amid the global downturn in oil and gas.
“You could see it, the spends were changing, the budgets were decreasing. There wasn’t the same investment,” she added.
As part of the redundancy package offered to Mrs Gibson, BP paid for some training at the UK School of Floristry.
Mrs Gibson said her love of creating flower arrangements and bouquets had been on-going for “many years”.
She said: “If anything was ever needed family wise and things, I did it. I did my niece’s wedding flowers. I had never done any paid work, what I actually done was given flowers to people as a
present.
“I just felt, I’ve got a natural eye for it, so I decided to go for it. I set up my own website myself. I’m quite fortunate, because of the work I did in BP I am pretty computer savvy so I was
lucky enough I could do all that.”
Mrs Gibson is hoping to expand her business in the next year as the upturn in Aberdeen begins.
She said the impact of the downturn on Aberdeen and the wider region was clear to see.
“It’s a very difficult world out there now. Aberdeen is not the place it was. The amount of houses that are for sale. People are finding it really difficult to sell their homes.
“But I am hopeful for the next year and expanding the business. It’s been a real change but I can’t imagine doing anything else now.”
This series is in association with Elevator – Scotland’s social enterprise dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship, enterprise and employability – works across Grampian and Tayside to help facilitate the start-up and growth of new and existing businesses.
Delivering Business Gateway, Elevator currently engages with 2,500 start-up businesses and assists around 1,000 organisations to grow annually with advice and support. It aims to help an additional 200 start-ups a year through initiatives such as its hugely successful Accelerator Programme, which aims to fast-track businesses to the next level. Find out more here.
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