The odds are against any small business begun when Warren G. Harding was president surviving until 2023. And if a business beats those odds, it might not be run by the original family.
But Phillip’s Flowers and Gifts managed both and was recently honored by the La Grange Park Board of Trustees for its 70 years of service to the village and surrounding communities.
“You’ve been a staple in our community for many years,” La Grange Park Village President James Discipio told Phillip’s Executive Vice President Baxter W. Phillip at the June 27 board meeting.
Discipio read a proclamation in the firm’s honor, saying “I know you’re proud of your family and we’re proud of you.”
The La Grange Park store, at 515 N. La Grange Road, was the second location for a business that eventually grew to include six stores, two warehouses and a thriving online operation.
“I was only a gleam in my father’s eye when we opened this store,” Phillip said.
James A. Phillip Sr., the son of Austrian immigrants, said he was forced into the workplace at 12 when his father died. After knocking around in several jobs — and serving in World War I — he found he had a knack for the floral business.
Phillip, who came to be known by his family and employees as “Senior,” opened the original Phillip’s Flower Shop in a small storefront on Cermak Road in Cicero in 1923. After establishing the shop’s reputation and growing a customer base, he moved the business down the street to 4904 W. Cermak Road, according to his family.
Phillip met Helen, a bookkeeper at nearby Western Electric. They married and went on to raise three children in an apartment over the flower shop: James Phillip Jr. — who is Baxter’s father — Russ and Loreley. Baxter’s father was known as JR.
Loreley is better known to Chicagoans as Lee Phillip, who went to Northwestern University and became a ground-breaking female journalist and talk show host at CBS Television for several decades.
After some lean years, the business flourished. The La Grange Park store opened in 1952, and Phillips Flowers and Gifts eventually grew to eight stores in the Chicago area, including shops in Oak Brook, Naperville and Hinsdale.
Contacted later by phone, Baxter Phillip spoke to Pioneer Press about being part of such an iconic brand and reminisced on his family’s journey in a competitive industry.
“Back in the 1920s, it was a family business,” he said, recalling that even later when he was a small child, his grandmother still helped out with the bookkeeping.
All three children grew up working in the Cicero store before going off to college, all at Northwestern.
Baxter’s father JR was the driving force behind opening the La Grange Park store, the son said. He said his grandfather was happy that the Cicero store was thriving and employing family members, but JR had his eyes on expansion. That worried Senior, who had grown up and started his business during the economic devastation of the Depression.
“My dad went to his father and said, ‘you know, there’s this new concept called a shopping center,'” he said, “‘and they’re building one in La Grange Park. I think opportunity may be westward.'”
His father’s initial reaction was that it sounded risky, and it would to take a lot of capital.
Luckily, JR’s arguments prevailed and Senior told him to give it a try. When, after a rough first year, that store succeeded, JR, Russ and Lee helped open stores in Hinsdale and Oak Brook. The Oak Brook store was one of the first in the Oak Brook Shopping Center.
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With growth, Phillip’s Flowers began providing services for weddings, celebratory events and funerals, and became Phillip’s Flowers and Gifts.
Baxter Phillip spoke of the changes the business had been through during the last half of the 20th century.
“The obvious big change was in technology,” he said.
He stressed that improving computer technology in the 1970s helped the florist business to grow along with organizations like FTD, allowing florists to easily service customers faster and farther away. Phillip said that beginning in the ’90s, the company also took advantage of the internet.
“Roughly half of our business is by phone, and about 15% to 20% online,” he said.
But Phillip said technological improvements in other areas had an even greater impact on the floral business.
“Trucking was changing, communication was changing, refrigeration was changing,” he said. “There was no refrigeration in the 1920s. Nobody had air conditioning and nobody had refrigerated trailers.”
Phillip estimated that when his grandfather started the business, he obtained 80% to 90% of his flowers from within 100 miles of the Chicago area. As the century wore on, Phillip’s Flowers slowly shifted to getting about half of its product from California.
Now, Phillip’s Flowers and Gifts gets about 80% of its flowers from Columbia and Ecuador, some from Holland and also some from Asia and Africa.
“They grow the flowers along the equator where the sun shines longer every day, but at high altitudes where the temperatures are mild,” he said of the warmer climates producing flowers for the world’s florists. Phillip also stressed that those equatorial regions had rich soil and a less expensive labor market.
Phillip said that modernity and the global marketplace definitely had its impact on the floral business.
“Everybody in South America does business in English,” he said. “We’re buying directly by phone and email. That was unheard of 50 years ago.”
The international growers, with their longer growing season, made flowers available to the American consumer for longer periods of the year, allowing a wider selection.
“We have a much wider selection of flowers year-round at much better prices,” he said.
Phillip said the family has always strived to live up to its founder’s ideals.
“We’re a small family business and we try to put our customers first because that’s what our grandfather taught us,” he said. “We’re glad that we have four generations of the family involved.”
Hank Beckman is a freelancer.