This mom from Texas turned her passion for pumpkins into a thousand dollar business!
Heather Torres, founder of Porch Pumpkins, opened up about her successful porch decorating business where she designs and installs elaborate pumpkin displays outside people’s homes while appearing on Office Koerner podcast with Chris Koerner.
During the interview, published Wednesday, October 2, Torres explains how it all started when she saw her friends paying thousands of dollars to have Christmas decorations installed in their homes.
Having already had experience decorating her own home with pumpkins every fall, Torres decided to take the plunge in 2020 and start her own small business, which has since grown rapidly thanks to her hard work and a team of designers and delivery people.
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Another of Porch Pumpkins’ stunning displays.
Pumpkins on the porch/Instagram
“In my first year of business I expected to design 30 porches, we’re doing 250 in 2020! This year we will be offering 1,037 pumpkin displays to Porch Pumpkins clients in the Dallas Fort Worth and Houston area,” Torres tells PEOPLE. “We look forward to continuing our growth and will add Austin in 2026.”
Packages offered on its official website include smaller screens and larger screens, and prices range between $325 and $1,350. However, it is officially sold out for the 2024 season.
During the interview, Torres refers to one of her viral Instagram videos shared on September 26 that shows her running home to complete an order. She explains to Koerner that she made 21 designs herself out of the 50 orders they had that day.
“It’s a $10,000 day,” says the host, to which she agrees with a smile.
Porch Pumpkins also offers cleaning and moving services that can be arranged before or after Thanksgiving. Torres says that about 65% to 70% of her customers opt for this arrangement. She ends up donating all the pumpkins she gets as feed for farm animals, and she also donates hay straw to a local farm.
Torres, located outside of Dallas in the Rockwall area, delivers to six zip codes throughout Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.
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Heather Torres and Chris Koerner.
Chris Koerner/Instagram
She also offered insight into the brand and name behind her business, which Koerner then tells her “literally invented the industry” of luxury pumpkin displays.
“What inspired the name was that I had been decorating pumpkins for a long time. When I stayed at home with my oldest son in 2013, he was 7 months old, I went crazy for pumpkins,” she explains.
Over time, she became an expert in caring for pumpkin decorations and how to make them last as long as possible.
“I’ve been putting them in my landscape and what I’ve learned is that if you put pumpkins in the landscape, they will rot faster than if you put them on the porch. I knew this because I had been decorating my home for years. So I knew I wanted to make it very clear that we were going to put the pumpkins on your porch so they would last longer,” she adds, hence the name Porch Pumpkins.
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As people now reach out and approach her with business opportunities, she explains that she first used word of mouth marketing among her friends before it got into “a few fun hands.”
Someone with 80,000 followers then posted about the venture on her Instagram account, she says, when her phone started “ringing off the hook” with requests from complete strangers who wanted Porch Pumpkins in their own home.
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Source: HIS Education