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Kaiwen “Kai” Wang Nobriga’s regular clients include luxury brands and celebrities such as former first lady Michelle Obama, but he says he owes his rapid rise in the floral industry to the everyday customers who’ve always supported him.
The 30-year-old affectionately refers to them as “aunties,” proclaiming, “Hawaii aunties are the best!”
He opened Gentle Beast, an elegant floral salon in Ward Centre, a year ago when his business got too big to run from his kitchen. As a former travel journalist for Vogue magazine, Wang Nobriga had no training as a florist. Originally from a small town near Shanghai, China, Wang Nobriga came to Hawaii as a visitor in 2019 and soon married a local resident.
Becoming a florist started with decorating his home in Kaimuki with fresh seasonal flowers. He had an affinity for French-European floral arrangements versus tropical flowers, a taste acquired while attending university in Japan and writing about European destinations. When he couldn’t find the particular type of flowers he favored locally, he ordered them online from all over the world.
Wang Nobriga, who speaks English, Chinese and Japanese, taught himself flower design by watching videos by Sachi Matsuura, a florist in Moriguchi, Japan, who owns the Happy Come shop. She has been his mentor for three years, and he now meets with her once a month in Japan.
His friends loved the arrangements they saw in his home and soon inundated him with orders. His first high-end account was Cartier, and through word of mouth he steadily acquired many of the island’s luxury brands as clientele.
His signature style is distinguished by the combination of five or six different flowers as opposed to just one or two kinds used in most arrangements, he said. The final product has a refined appearance with much detail and texture. Instead of using baby’s breath as filler, he adds greenery and “tender, delicate” flowers like clematis, astilbe and scabiosa.
At Gentle Beast, available blooms are displayed attractively in vases on a table and throughout the store. It also carries a variety of hand-blown vases by the German brand Guaxs and the Belgian glass company Henry Dean; house plants from the Plantoem garden shop in Kaimuki occupy a small corner. Fashionable chairs, a baby grand piano used for special events and Chinoiserie wallpaper trimmed with white latticework add to the chic ambience.
Customers are seen by appointment or place flower orders online with an option for delivery or pickup. Because the flowers are ordered from Japan and Europe, it wouldn’t be cost effective for Wang Nobriga to keep a large inventory on hand for walk-in customers, Wang Nobriga said.
Asked why he named such a genteel shop Gentle Beast, Wang Nobriga said he had two reasons. One of his favorite verses by English poet Siegfried Sassoon is: “In me the tiger sniffs the rose,” which to him means “even the wildest soul can have a sense of tenderness (about) the world.”
Secondly, the name was chosen to honor King, his husband’s 13-year-old Labrador retriever, who embodies the term “gentle beast.” Lance Nobriga, a Department of Homeland Security dog trainer, worked for years alongside King to screen travelers for explosives until the dog retired in 2020, with honors and great fanfare at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport. Nobriga formally adopted King when the dog retired.
With a staff of four he trained himself, Wang Nobriga said it’s a challenge to keep up with 200 to 300 monthly floral orders, decorate Tiffany and Cartier shops every week and do large special events — “We are like an army!”
He also holds a workshop every month, often attended by many of his regular customers, at $255 a person. The workshop held in early November was unusual in that participants were comprised of 26 florists from Japan who got to experience firsthand how to prepare for big events. Over seven days, they assisted Wang Nobriga in decorating for the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival activities.
People usually laugh in disbelief when he tells them Obama has been a customer since 2020, when a celebrity friend of hers heard about him and ordered birthday flowers. She loved them so much he’s had an order to deliver a bouquet of her favorite white flowers every year since then, he said. During the winter months when the Obamas reside at their Waimanalo estate, Gentle Beast decorates for special occasions and refreshes the flowers at the home every week.
Wang Nobriga said he doesn’t like to mention his luxury clients just to make an impression because “more importantly, all the people, all the aunties, have been my biggest fans and they tell everybody about Gentle Beast, and that’s why we are here.”
They’re the ones who bring him food when they know he’s too busy to eat on Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day or bring him gifts of appreciation.
While creating $500 to $1,000 bouquets for VIP customers lends prestige to his business, “making a $100 arrangement for a grandma that will make her day and sometimes make her cry — isn’t that more meaningful?”
He cherishes the way his regular customers make flowers a part of their family traditions. One woman sent her mother, who was in a nursing home, bouquets for major and minor occasions to remind her of how much she was loved. When she died recently, photos of her favorite arrangements from Gentle Beast were displayed at her funeral as a depiction of all her happy memories.
“That’s very, very special. It makes you realize you are doing something right, makes you realize that those are people who have been supporting you and make you who you are,” he said.
“The community (in Hawaii) is different than anywhere else in the world,” he said. “I never felt this level of acceptance in my life.”
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Gentle Beast
Ward Centre 1200 Ala Moana Blvd.
Info: 808-312-4556, gentlebeasthawaii.com
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