The Founder Story
How a Rose Found Me
The first time I heard the words Medellín — the city of eternal spring, I was going through one of the harder seasons of my life. Someone I had just met began telling me about Colombia: about a country with more bird species than any other on earth, more orchids than anywhere else, a place where the soil and altitude conspire to grow flowers that the rest of the world ends up holding in their hands. I don't remember exactly what I said back. I remember what my body did. It got quiet and listened.
That conversation didn't leave me. Colombia kept walking back into the room.
A little while later, another Finn — someone who had spent time in Colombia — looked at me and said, almost in passing, you should start working with roses. On paper it sounded ridiculous. I am a homeschool mom and a dancer with a bachelor's in business. I am not a florist. I have never run an import business. But something about it stuck the way real ideas stick — quietly, without permission.
I started talking about it out loud. And the moment I noticed I couldn't stop talking about it was the moment my twelve-year-old son leaned in. When I described the business side — sourcing, margins, how a product travels across a border — his whole face changed. That is the look every homeschool parent waits for. The pedagogue in me came online. A curriculum started to form before I had given it permission to.
The Grandmother Who Grew Roses in the North
Then the older memories arrived.
My grandmother grew roses in the north of Finland, where roses are not supposed to thrive. She made rose water. She tucked rose petals into closets so her clothes carried their scent. When my marriage was falling apart and I was teaching myself how to stop being afraid of everything, my mother told me she believed my grandmother had become my guardian angel. I think she was right. I think she heard me, and I think the roses are how she answers.
Praying for a Sign
When the question of actually going to Colombia became real, I was terrified. I had not spent a single night away from my son in twelve years. People warned me Medellín was dangerous. The careful mother in me had quietly replaced the brave young woman who, twenty years ago, moved alone from Finland to the United States and eventually became American. I had forgotten her.
So one February morning, on a walk, I prayed for a sign. A real one. Not subtle. I asked specifically that my friend would be able to come with me. I lifted my head — and there, parked directly in front of me, was a car. On the far side of it: the word Colombia. Within the same minute, a message arrived from my friend saying she might be able to join the trip.
I had not seen the car before I turned. I had not finished praying when the message came. I took it as a yes.
She didn't end up coming. That was alright. The sign wasn't really about her.
The Roses Kept Coming
After that walk, the pattern recognition I had practiced for years as a dancer and as a body-mind practitioner started lighting up everywhere. When I told people my Colombia story, they answered with rose stories of their own. One person turned out to be related by marriage in a family to one of the largest rose importers from Colombia. The building I live in used to house a flower shop. The current business owner's favorite flower? The rose. She introduced me to rose essential oils and the medicinal lineage of the flower — an entire field of knowledge that deserves a course of its own.
Even the small things. The first internet modem I set up came with a randomly generated password printed on the bottom. Mine contained the word ROSE.
Entrepreneurs are often told to ignore intuition. In reality, what we call intuition is often compressed pattern recognition – built over years of exposure, training, and lived experience.
What changed for me wasn’t belief. It was noticing repetition. And repetition, in any system, is information.
What Rose Import LAB™ Actually Is
Rose Import LAB™ is an experiential learning program — a hands-on simulation of starting an import/export business that follows the journey of a rose from a farm in Colombia to your doorstep. It is designed with the homeschool student in mind, but it is for anyone who wants to learn international trade, systems thinking, and what it means to practice global citizenship.
A rose is a delicate, perishable product that has already passed through dozens of hands by the time it reaches you. The breeders. The growers. The pickers, packers, cold-chain operators, freight forwarders, customs brokers, wholesalers, florists. It is a quiet, intricate dance of timing and logistics, and the more I have learned, the more reverence I feel for everyone holding it together. That reverence is itself a teaching. Once you understand how one product travels across the world, you start to see every product, every system, every border that way. You can't unsee it.
The pedagogy behind the LAB comes from over ten years of homeschooling, community educator studies, dance instruction, a 500-hour yoga teacher certification, and trauma-informed yoga training. The business thinking is shaped by my degree and by the Reflective Body Journal — a movement-based practice I developed and now integrate into the Rose and Wellness program. As entrepreneurs, and as human beings, we are constantly constructing identity. Body-mind practices are how we stay regulated through the construction. They are how we return to center after the fluctuations of life — the good ones and the hard ones.
Why Stories Matter in Business
International business, at the end of the day, is not really about freight or tariffs or margins, though we will teach you all of those. It is about stories. The stories of the people who grew the thing, the people who moved the thing, the people who chose to buy the thing and bring it into their homes. Theory and technology are the scaffolding. Stories are what shape a brand, a product, and the relationship between the two.
With roses — and with wellness — we are collaborating with nature, with delicate systems, and with each other. That is the work.
An Invitation
I am looking forward to sharing real-time stories from our field trips to Colombia, introducing you to our team on the ground, and getting to know you. Whether you are curious about international trade, a florist, a business owner looking at your craft from a new angle, a parent-and-child team ready to build something together, or a homeschool family looking for real-world learning that doesn't pretend — you are welcome here.
Let's build together. Starting with roses.
— Heidi Alasuvanto Founder, Rose Import LAB™
