Sayville Entrepreneur Revives Closing Bayport Business

Everyone has their favorite business. The one place that they just couldn’t possibly live without. For local business owner Dora Chan, that place was . So when she heard the business would be closing its doors after Christmas, she was heartbroken. Without too much time to think, she decided to step in and buy the business.

Now renamed Make Someone Happy, this Montauk Highway-based florist that borders Sayville and Blue Point is still very much alive thanks to Chan’s decision.

“I decided to keep all of the staff that was here working with Denise,” Chan said. “I really just wanted to keep all the customers happy. I found out the week of Christmas that they would be closing their doors and I decided to just take it over. On January 1, the business was all mine and I really didn’t have too much time to even think about it.”

During the month of January, Chan made some changes to interior of the business working alongside her three other part-time employees. Valentine’s Day was their first big push as a new florist and she said it worked out better than she anticipated.

Just because Chan didn’t know too much about the floral business, doesn’t mean she didn’t know anything about business. As a matter of fact, Chan runs two other successful businesses right in the heart of Sayville – Poor Baby on Main Street and Wai Wah Kitchen, located next to Stop & Shop. So she was able to cross promote her new floral business with her existing customer base.

“I don’t have a floral background but I do have a design/fashion degree from FIT,” Chan said. “To me, flowers are an artistic business, just like clothing so I can bring my experience there and apply it here.”

Make Someone Happy is a full-service florist, splitting its business between cut flowers and the nursery. There are also antiques and plenty of merchandise for sale.

“You can kind of sense the charm in here,” Chan said. “Every other day I would come into the store and treat myself to something. I felt like I worked really hard and this special treat just made me happy. So when Denise told me they were closing, I was just devastated. I said ‘Where am I going to get my flowers?’”

Chan grew up in Sayville and went to Sayville High School. She was born in Hong Kong and came over to the United States when she was eight-years-old. Her parents opened the Chinese restaurant 37 years ago, and when they left to return to China, she took over and now oversees the day-to-day operations there.

“I grew up in the business,” she said. “That’s what I knew and I was learning more and more every day. The restaurant is still my main business because it’s just what I know.”

After high school, Dora went to college at FIT in New York City and worked with some big name designers, such as Donna Karan. She married and had a daughter and moved back to Long Island.

In a moment quite parallel to how she came to be a flower shop owner, Chan was talking to a customer at the Chinese restaurant about opening a small boutique in town. It just so happened that there was a store going out of business at the same time, and Chan was able to occupy the space. That was 17 years ago, and the special clothing boutique, Poor Baby, has called that location home ever since.