Wilson Avenue in Uptown, where Forget Me Knodt opened at 1313 W. Wilson Ave. Photo: Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Janessa Knodt opened her flower shop at 1313 W. Wilson Ave. a year ago, but she has been arranging flowers most of her life. She worked on and off in her grandparents’ flower shop in California and took a design job at a florist while studying at UC San Diego.
After graduation she moved to Chicago for a career in advertising. Flowers stayed on the side. She did arrangements for weddings and events, and even at the agency she found reasons to make flowers for sales pitches.
Twenty-six weddings
Eventually she wanted her own business, but the jump took time. She had a solid job and the move scared her. For one full year she did 26 weddings on top of her day job, until it became clear she couldn’t keep doing both. That was the signal to leave.
The wedding bookings let her budget for the first year in her own shop. The crises, she says, came almost entirely from the business side: deciding between an LLC and a sole proprietorship, choosing insurance, and handling a pile of administrative questions. Those were the moments she felt like quitting. The flowers themselves never worried her.
Hiring her first employees was its own adjustment. Being a manager inside a corporation, she found, is different from being the boss in a business that is yours. There is more emotion involved, and the urge to be everyone’s friend runs into the need to make the calls.
A coffee habit and a For Rent sign
The location came from a daily routine. Knodt went to Baker & Nosh for coffee every day and noticed how busy it always was. Walking her dog Maddie one day, she spotted a For Rent sign a few doors down at 1313 W. Wilson. She was nervous about taking the step, but the rent made sense, and Forget Me Knodt has been on the block ever since.
Linh Tran-Whitaker covers Argyle Street, dining and community life.
