After 34 years in business, Crystal Florist shuts North Arlington location

After 34 years in business, Crystal Florist and Greenhouse closed its North Arlington location for good on Friday.

The business has consolidated with its Garfield location, open since 2011. Services, staff, prices and products will not change as a result of the consolidation. Products include perpetual grave programs, sympathy flowers, custom floral design and more.

The family-owned florist and gravesite service is now focusing its efforts on increasing its online presence and streamlining its services through its consolidation.

“I’ve been working two jobs for more than 40 years, as a respiratory therapist for the last 29 years at [Hackensack University Medical Center], and running Crystal Florist with my wife, Patti, and son, Paul-Adam, who joined the business in 2011,” said Paul Maffei, co-owner of the business.

“While my wife and I will be scaling back our hours, we are committed to our customers and will be a presence at the Garfield store managing the day-to-day operation alongside our son," Maffei said.

A greenhouse will be built at the Garfield location to create space for more products, he said. The business's website, where customers nationwide can order grave saddles and other arrangements for delivery, will also be upgraded.

“We already have customers all over the country, but with an added online presence, anyone will be able to order a custom grave saddle with, say, a New York Yankee pennant for Father’s Day,” Maffei said.

“For our customers, nothing is going to change,” said Paul-Adam Maffei, who has managed the Garfield store since 2011. “We’re still going to be taking care of between 1,500 and 2,000 gravesites across 35 cemeteries in northern New Jersey. … We’re just going to essentially run the business out of Garfield — so streamline everything, make everything a lot more convenient for us as a staff and for our customers.”

The Maffeis opened Crystal Florist and Greenhouse in 1989 due to a love of flowers and a desire to bring peace to people in mourning.

“It's not joyful to go to a cemetery,” Paul Maffei said. “So you want to try and make it as painless as possible, and make it easy for people to go there to see their loved ones … so we do plantings for people, we dress the grave up, and when they get there and they see that, they're happy because it makes them feel that somebody is at least thinking of their loved ones and their loved ones haven't been forgotten.”

The business has many dedicated customers.

“They have been a very big part of my life for the past 20 years,” said New York resident Diane Miller, a longtime customer who uses Crystal Florist's services to tend to her mother’s and maternal grandmother’s graves at Holy Cross Cemetery, across from the North Arlington store.

The Maffeis provide a personalized year-round rotation of flowers for Miller’s family, including fresh flowers in December for her mother’s birthday, Christmas blankets with gardenias and blue decorations during the holiday season, and summer arrangements that are watered twice weekly.

“I never want those graves to be without flowers all year long and have it look like nobody cares,” Miller said.

The Maffeis said they get a sense of fulfillment from helping others through the business.

“They have peace of mind that when they do go, it's already done and looks beautiful,” Paul-Adam Maffei said about families visiting the tended gravesites. “They know it is being taken care of even though they can't physically get there. So it's just nice to give them that.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Crystal Florist in North Arlington NJ closes after 34 years