Innovation in the Floral Industry is Possible! Interview with Sahid Nahim Founder of New Bloom Solutions
"Your customer is not a means to an end — your customer is the means to a beginning." That line from Sahid Nahim, founder and CEO of New Bloom Solutions, captures the whole spirit of this conversation. Vonda met Sahid at the Society of American Florists convention in Orlando, booked a follow-up call, and knew right away the podcast listeners needed to hear from him. New Bloom Solutions, partnered with Above All Flowers, is part agency, part media company — connecting florists, wholesalers, and farms through news and information while championing innovative tools that help everyone sell more flowers.
From luxury purses to flower advocate
Sahid's route into flowers is anything but typical. After years in marketing and sales for high-end fashion houses including Hermes and Carolina Herrera, he burned out on selling expensive purses and answered a newspaper ad for a sales executive role at Esmeralda Farms — drawn partly by a childhood memory of his mother designing at home and his amazement at how long statice lasted. He spent seven-plus years there as a sales trainer, then five or six more at Royal Flowers. Making a hundred calls a day, he became more consultant than salesperson — and when he saw e-commerce players like The Bouqs, UrbanStems, and Flower Muse rising, he started helping his florist customers pro bono: opening Instagram accounts, redesigning websites. Their sales and loyalty grew, and his epiphany followed: B2B shouldn't be about the transaction; it should support the customer's entire business model. After a panic attack or two at work — and shaped by surviving cancer at 23, which taught him life is short and health is fragile — he jumped ship to build New Bloom Solutions.
Grow the pie, don't fight over it
Sahid's vision for the industry borrows a quote he credits to Alejandro Perez of Komet Sales: don't fight over your piece of the pie — grow the pie bigger, and everyone's piece grows with it. That's why New Bloom's media channels share even competitors' good ideas and promote any event that strengthens the industry. For florists specifically, New Bloom acts as a connector: pointing them to resources, innovations like BloomyPro, and honest information. He also offers affordable one-on-one consulting where florists can ask anything — like why white roses vanished last November — and get unsugarcoated facts, because trust gaps between florists, wholesalers, and farms usually come from not seeing all the moving parts.
The Bloom Show: hearing it from the horse's mouth
New Bloom's YouTube program, The Bloom Show, exists to give the industry a unified voice. Sahid has put Armellini and Prime on the same call, and Chrysal and FloraLife on another, so florists hear the logistics story directly from the trucking companies instead of assuming their wholesaler is making excuses. He interviews farms (including a grower in Hawaii), wholesalers, and e-commerce experts, and files reports from events like WF&FSA and SAF. Vonda calls it myth-busting — and don't miss her own interview with Sahid on The Bloom Show on YouTube.
Speaking Roses and creative upsells
One innovation Sahid represents exclusively: Speaking Roses, a system that prints messages, art, or photos directly on flower petals — think of it as a greeting card on the flower itself. Once locked behind a $30,000 franchise fee, it's now being brought directly to florists, opening upsells for brides, corporate accounts, hotel weeklies, and doubled-price Valentine's roses. Lori's instant reaction says it all: a rose reading "I love you, Lori" beats an ordinary bouquet. Sahid pushes the idea further for slow holidays — jokes, mustaches, or "this six-pack of buds is for you" printed on Father's Day flowers.
The pain points florists don't know they have
Asked what two pandemic years have exposed, Sahid names three things: labor, logistics, and — the sneaky one — not knowing your pain points. Too many florists say "why do I need a website? It hasn't brought me anything," when the real answer is it was done wrong or done a decade ago. His EMC talk said it plainly: don't let technology pass you by. And logistics chains run deeper than most realize — even closed driving schools during COVID meant fewer truckers, fewer trucks, and higher prices for everyone downstream. What inspires him now: seeing even a fraction of a percent of change in the industry, and sitting at tables with people he never imagined he'd meet.
Key takeaways
- Treat customers as partners in a beginning, not transactions — supporting their whole business grows yours.
- Grow the industry's pie instead of fighting over pieces; share good information even when it isn't yours.
- Seek facts from the source — logistics problems are real chain reactions, not wholesaler excuses.
- Don't let technology pass you by; a website that "doesn't work" was probably built wrong or left to age.
- Look for creative product innovations (like printed roses) that turn ordinary stems into premium, personal gifts.