AFTER 14 months a florist’s dream has withered away and now she has had to shut her Colchester business.

When Fiona Watson opened the Daisy Cup Flower Café in Sir Isaac’s Walk, she knew it would be a challenging venture.

But Fiona is sadly another entrepreneur demonstrating how hard it is to keep a new business up and running.

Half of new start-up businesses in the UK fail within five years.

And Fiona’s business has now become another statistic.

The enterprise – part florists and part café – was a way of fusing both her passions.

The idea for the business grew from bad wedding experiences.

The former paramedic began training as a florist while she was pregnant and still working for the Essex Ambulance Service.

And after 17 years, she felt it was time for a change from the rigorous life of a paramedic.

Once her son was born, Ms Watson reduced her hours and set up the Daisy Hut in 2012 – a small florists, which she ran from a workshop at home.

It was not long after that the urge to create something unique led her to quit the ambulance service for good.

In February 2015, the Daisy Cup opened its doors to a fanfare in the town centre.

Fiona said: “I’ve put my heart and soul and everything into the shop and am devastated I’ve not been able to make it work.

“Running a business is the toughest thing I’ve ever done and the truth is the café grew far bigger than imagined, which created its own problems, mainly taking all my time from getting the floristry area off the ground and creating higher costs.

“As a result the florist side didn’t grow enough and this was needed to support the whole business.

“I never wanted to change the world. I just hoped we offered something a bit different which I hoped people would enjoy.

“However, the cost of running a town centre business is terrifying and I never managed to get ahead.”

To rent a retail unit in the town centre costs anything between £15,000 to £75,000 a year with business rates ranging from £12,000 to £61,000.

David Burch, director of Policy at the Essex Chambers of Commerce, said challenges like this – as well as increasing competition, poor social media marketing and less innovation – areis affecting the success rate of independent retailers.

He said: “The average time span for a business is two to three years but lots of people in Essex want to be their own boss.

“For businesses, there are considerable outgoings before they’ve even taken any money and factor in staffing costs, bills and other overheads.

“The National Living Wage also is causing some issues in terms of the amount they have to pay staff, which can have a knock-on effect.

“The costs are more substantial than people realise.

“In Colchester particularly, car parking in the town centre is a perennial problem and people being able to get to shops without walking a long distance, so there are all these different pressures.”