Flowers and teddy bears and some of the most sought out gifts on Valentine’s day. 

If that ‘bears’ to be the case, what better gift is there than a bear made out of roses?

Taylor Wright, the senior vice president of the Women Exploring Business and Technology Registered Student Organization, RSO at Eastern, endured the windy weather as she helped to sell rose bears in time for Valentine’s day.

According to her, the presale for the bears was extremely successful. 

Buyers were given the option of buying a rose bear in either a box or unboxed.

The bears in a box were priced at $25, while the unboxed were $20. 

All 10 of the boxed bears were sold within the first day. 

The remaining bears sold out very quickly after, for a total of 25 bears sold, and a profit of $450. 

The RSO had this Valentine’s day sale last year, and the group learned that the red bears were nowhere nearly as popular as the pink and purple ones. 

“We didn’t order any red this year because we had 5 reds leftover from last year so we didn’t order any red because we had ordered, like, 15 reds last year,” Wright said. “Those were not selling, pinks and purples have been selling.” 

While they accepted cash, the group also accepted venmo and square-in. 

The money from there goes straight into the group’s personal web banking account to make sure that everything stays confidential and professional. 

Although the bears have been the new trend for the past two years, Wright said that they had not always been. 

“So every year, we make it a tradition to do a Valentine’s day event, so we did this last year,”  she said. “But my freshman year, we did a flower sale, so we created bouquets of flowers in different sizes.”

But Wright also notes that there were some problems with the bouquet sale. 

“We didn’t do the flowers again just because it was hard to find fresh flowers on our own and for cheap, too,” she said. “Cheap but nice quality, to where we could make a profit. And it was a lot, and it ended up being messy and hard to put together.” 

Wright said that the Women’s Exploring Business and Technology club used to be an RSO a long time ago, but faded out over the years. 

Then one of her members fought to bring it back. 

“My freshman year, Destiny Blanchard was looking for a women’s club when a professor mentioned that this club had started, but then stopped,” Wright said. “So they already had a logo and everything, so she said that we could probably start it back up. Destiny came into business 1000 [course] talking about the club and how she was looking for board members, and that’s when I first joined the club.” 

To anyone who is needing words of wisdom in how to make it out into the business world, Wrights says to be bold, courageous and confident. 

Adriana Hernandez-Santana can be reached at 581-2812 or at aihernandez@eiu.edu.