Mother’s Day is typically the busiest day of the year but local florist Talahiva Chan Mow Hill, the co-owner of Salote Florist in Apia, will even busier day than usual despite state of emergency restrictions. 

But Mrs. Hill said that she decided to overcome the restrictions by creating a gift box composed of local products. 

“I thought that we won’t get that [many] Mother’s Day orders because of the coronavirus and the lockdown and also because we get flowers from New Zealand,” Mrs. Hill said in an interview with Samoa Observer.

But Mrs. Hill’s gift box idea consisting of local products has made business for the lcoal florist far busier than anticipated with orders coming in from as far afield as America, Australia, and New Zealand.

“I was talking to my mom. Maybe we will try to create a tropical collection for Mother's Day, so I came up with the idea to make a gift box to use local products," she said.

“So we tried to create a tropical flower collection for mother’s day so we have gift boxes with Mailelani lotions and Wilex chocolates. After creating those a lot of orders started coming in but the majority of the orders that we got are from overseas, so their moms are here in Samoa. I think 90 per cent or 80 per cent of our orders are from overseas.

“So we’ve got the Mailelani oil, Mailelani body lotion, the lip balm, and the fragrance soap and a small box of Koko Loa chocolate and then we have a little arrangement of the tropical flowers.

"The boxes are also personalised, we have the mother's names on them."

Mrs. Hill supported the local people by looking around for people who can help, such as the local flowers that women came into the shop to sell.

"So we had over 20 women come to the shop and brought flowers and they're really happy that they are getting some money as well from it," she said.

“Maybe in the coming days we will be back to doing floral arrangements for church" she said. 

"[We are]wishing all the Mothers of Samoa a Happy Mother’s Day and a big malo to them for the hard work and their love and support for their children. The feeling to be a mother is amazing, it's the best job ever.

"So I guess this year I would say this is the best mother's day we've had because everything is local. We supported local companies, we supported our local people. So I would say this year is our best Mother's Day."