Back by popular demand is SAF’s riff on the popular TED Talks — this year’s theme: “Beginnings.” Five industry members share inspiring 10-minute stories on how they got their start, launched a big idea or hit refresh to start over.

Headquartered in Miami, Continental Flowers owns five farms in Colombia. The company also imports cut flowers from dozens of growers in six other Latin nations, selling about 750 million stems each year to around 1,000 U.S. wholesalers and supermarkets.

Go where your competition isn’t. When building his company, Fernandez was able to strategically target wholesale customers in underserved cities providing unique, high quality flower types and providing fast, reliable service.

Continental Flowers was the first company to introduce the popular ‘Madame Delbard’ rose to the U.S. market. It also became the largest grower of the ‘Forever Young’ rose in Colombia.