By Elaine Iandoli

“Flowers are without hope,” poet Antonio Porchia once wrote. “Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow.”

Jim Daly (M.B.A. ’05) would certainly disagree.

Like a prize-winning hybrid, he combines the strengths of scientific research and technological prowess with sales and marketing expertise to bring out the best in Floralife and its parent firm, Smithers-Oasis Inc.   

“I’m involved in everything the Floralife division does [as it relates to] manufacturing and marketing,” says Daly.  “Along with that responsibility, I’m in charge of research for Smithers-Oasis.” 

Most recently, he directed a rebranding plan for Floralife, a 74-year-old Walterboro, S.C.-based company. The firm invented fresh flower food in the late 1930s and offers a range of post-harvest products manufactured in the United States, Colombia, Kenya, Belgium, and Korea. 

“We try to be where the flowers are consumed and where they’re produced,” says Daly. “Colombia and Ecuador supply 80 to 90 percent of all flowers for the United States, and Kenya is the largest producer of cut flowers for Europe.” 

He spent most of his career on the research side of the business. He double-majored in mathematics and chemistry at Elmhurst College in Illinois and holds an advanced degree in biochemistry from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. 

Daly’s career with Floralife began in college with a position as a part-time lab technologist during his sophomore year. 

“I ran out of money in the middle of the year, and I needed a job,” he recalls.

Daly never left Floralife, rising through the company’s research and development area and contributing to products and procedures that improved the care and transport of crops. Among them was a compound that inhibited the aging process for plants and produce.

“The base molecule was invented at North Carolina State University,” he says. “It was a pretty volatile gas. We licensed it, and my project was to figure out how to make that gas a powder.”

As Daly became more involved in the business side of the firm, he felt he needed additional education. Enrolling in NYIT’s School of Management helped him develop the skills that allowed his career to blossom.

“When you’re in business and you have a technical background, you start to see things that you don’t know, some of the basic things like different aspects of accounting,” he says. “I have a bachelor’s in mathematics so it’s not like the numbers scared me. I just never really understood accounting. It was an ‘aha’ moment when I had to build a financial statement in class.”

Daly says NYIT’s M.B.A. program also helped him appreciate “how the different pieces of business all fit together. You have to understand how marketing talks to accounting and how accounting talks to manufacturing. It’s hard to see that when you’ve just come up the research side.”

In 2007, Smithers-Oasis, a leading floral product and foam manufacturer based in Kent, Ohio, acquired Floralife in a move that allowed the smaller company to expand its global presence. 

“Five years ago, 85 percent of our business was in North America,” he says. “Today, it’s 40 percent.”

The need for a large-scale rebranding initiative—geared to a new worldwide, technologically savvy yet diverse consumer base—made overcoming language barriers and incorporating linguistic diversity all the more key. “All the products now tie together,” says Daly. “The look of the labels is similar and visually connecting.”

That means farmers who don’t speak English can recognize the product they need as easily as growers in Texas. 

With the advent of smartphone technology and social media, Floralife is committed to a larger Facebook presence, mobile website, and more direct consumer marketing. 

The researcher-turned-business exec acknowledges the difference between board rooms and laboratories.

“I actually think business is harder than science,” says Daly, “because you’re dealing with people, and they’re harder to predict than chemicals in a test tube.”

More Alumni Notes

Vol. 10 No. 3 Table of Contents