Sahid Nahim Talks Innovation at EMC Go Live Event

If you don’t know who Sahid Nahim is, it’s about time you found out!

He is the new guy on the block, the one with the crazy ideas and zero floral design experience. He also brings a breath of fresh air to the floral industry, understanding the business from different perspectives. Sahid has always been looking at if from outside in and truly believes there is so much better we could do as a community. 

New Bloom Solutions was founded from a genuine desire to contribute to the development of the floral industry, mainly by integrating technology into it. It is a company that, through Sahid’s voice, advocates for innovation within the community and collaboration within our industry.

Getting to know Sahid Nahim

^{INTERVIEW BY DIANA TOMA, EMC}

How did you start working in the floral industry?

I used to work in the fashion industry, for about eight to ten years where not only did I gain a lot of retail experience, but I have also met my wife. I have worked for brands like Carolina Herrera and Hermes and with the experience I had I understood trends, I understood customers and I understood fashion. At one point I got tired of selling expensive purses to clients who only wanted them because it was a trend to want them and I stepped back from it, taking a lot of know-how with me. 

Right about this time, I came upon an ad about a position in sales in the flower industry and that is basically how I started. I remember I was thinking about the idea before as I was interested to work in the world of flowers. 

From that first job to New Bloom solution, how did you get here?

After my first job, I also worked for another eight years with Royal Flowers, which is a big sales and distribution company and although I was doing a good job, I realised that sales was not my strongest point. Consulting and advising people into achieving their goals and improving communication between them slowly grew on me and I found great purpose in it. So, I gave up the sales career and started doing exactly this, which is how New Bloom Solutions was born.

You say you have an outside-in perspective over the flower industry. Tell us a little about the context of that...

First of all, there’s my previous experience of marketing and retail in other industries. When I joined the floral world, I already had a different perspective from seeing how things were done at a whole different level. I have worked on that initial job I had for about seven - eight years, selling and training. I experienced the 2008 crisis that hit us and survived it in times when many people lost their jobs. I have then witnessed the “basement Betty” phenomenon, people starting to sell flowers and arrangements from their home, transitioning from doing dailies to doing events and so on. A lot has happened to this industry back then and there is a lot of room for growth. 

I have seen how things should work in the fashion industry and I came into a new industry where people seem to be doing the same things, expecting different results and where there was a huge lack of trust between florists and wholesalers and distributors. Basically there was no communication. By looking at things from the outside-in perspective, I see there is immense opportunity to grow and I really just want to bring my contribution to the growth of a floral community with New Bloom Solutions.

New Bloom Solutions advocates for communication, for integration of technology, of social media into the floral industry. How do you inspire people to switch to technology in their work?

First thing I tell people is: do not fear! Technology is a thing that's going to be here. It's not going away! When Henry Ford had an idea of a car people said “no” to that too, but could you imagine today without cars? Who wants a horse-pulled carriage nowadays?

People approach technology in two different ways: either they are judgmental and say “that is never going to work!”, or they are very curious and drop any judgement or fear away. The latter are people who feel that technology can work for us, not against us. 

Everybody has a phone nowadays and that phone is technology. Whether you like it or not you are already integrated by now so might as well embrace that integration.

I encourage everybody to be curious, have no fear and keep an open mind. It is the future, no doubt about it, and we are lucky enough to be able to see how technology already helped the development of other industries. We just have to get inspired by the thing that we see working and start making it work for us too.

In your experience, how do you find floral designers in respect to adopting technology? Are they more reluctant or more open to it?

In the current context, with the growth of Instagram and social media in general, with the Covid situation I think designers are really embracing technology. The situation determined a lot of designers to pivot to technology, by using it as opportunities to create virtual forms of education, for example, which is amazing. We have streaming, also a technology, and we start to see successful shows that are centered on flowers and design. I think people are beginning to understand they have a voice and there is room for growth.

In my opinion, the “basement Betty's” - they are actually the ones that gradually became our influencers or floral influencers, they're the ones that saw the appearance of Instagram and Facebook. I just heard Sarah Campbell say she jumped on Facebook right away and I believe that she became a celebrity because she was at the right place at the right time, because she integrated her model into social media as fast as possible. Not only is Sarah awesome and a marketing dynamo she was also an early adopter which she humbly credits as a part of her success and amazing reach and connections with her customers. By the way she is recommended to jump on Tick Tok now!

So I truly think that many designers are seeing this and taking advantage of technology. People who think out of the box, who embrace change, they are going to be the leaders of the pack, they are the early adopters and then everybody seems to follow along.

Why should we integrate technology in our floral  business?

The thing is, technology is going somewhere. Right? Technology is here to stay. Now where are you going? Are you going to stay where you're at or are you going to go somewhere and grow along with it? So that's the question, because it is continuing to grow and has a destination now.

What's your destination and are you going to use it to get to that destination? If you're happy where you're stay and with what you're doing, that’s good, but if you believe in growth and you believe in pivoting and you believe in scaling, which is all every entrepreneur's mission, then you should embrace technology. You have to figure out what tools you're going to use because technology is not going away. Now, “where are you going?” is the question.

How does New Bloom Solution work? For somebody who doesn't know anything about it, how would you describe the work you do?

We are innovation technology facilitators. We started off with building and developing websites for wholesalers and florists and distributors, websites that engage and websites are a little bit a little different because there should be intentionality with a website. We also do  social media management, and we offer consulting. We have partnered with Above All Flowers as facilitators when it comes to products so we’re also an email marketing company. 

We find a cool innovation and we facilitate it and help them how to enter the market and get them to the florists, get them to the wholesalers, the distributors, depending on the product.

We also do business consulting so my goal is just as I say here solutions. Any solutions that the business needs from digital marketing website design, market facilitation, branding, recruiting were able to help. 

What can we expect from your presentation at the EMC Go Live Event? 

My goal is to really highlight collaboration. I think that many florists fear competition but are constantly wondering what the others are doing. I see an opportunity to create your own ecosystem, your own community not only in your own city or area code. You can look around the world, so we are talking about international perspectives. A community means to help you to help each other, so I will address solutions  to build your authority through social media, through facebook, through blogging and so on. My work facilitates collaboration and communication and mostly my presentation will address that. 

In any business there's competition and if we lose that perspective and discard the fear that others are going to steal our idea or they're gonna know too much, room is being made for collaboration. 

Why not support each other in this and if you think way beyond borders there's so much more opportunity to learn and  to bring value to your customers. It's really about how we use the technologies that we have and how we intentionally and consciously reach out to our florist community. how we also reach out to the business community around us to partner with them in order to reach out to their customers as well. If we start using everybody's ecosystem and everybody's network we are all going to benefit  and grow. That's where my vision is because that's really my passion. Our mission is to innovate, connect and inspire the flower industry. The message I want to get across is that we are stronger together, as a community not as a separate little floral island. Get off your island and let's make it a continent!

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Read all about the EMC Go Live Event on our blog, here.