Sylvia Nichols, AIFD, PFCI, accepts her award from John Tornatore, President, Connecticut Florists Association (far left) and Bob Sabia, AIFD.

A former winner of Floral Management magazine's Marketer of the Year award can add a new accolade to her resume: Connecticut Florist of the Year.

The Connecticut Florists Association (CFA) surprised Sylvia Nichols, AIFD, PFCI, a self-professed "personal trainer for florists," with its highest honor during the association's 75th anniversary dinner party last Saturday, in Cromwell, Conn.

"She's known not just in Connecticut, but nationwide, as one of the most positive, can-do florists," Bob Sabia, AIFD, chairman of the CFA Awards, said before  presenting the award to Nichols. "She's helped educate thousands of florists from Maine to the West Coast. Her message continually is 'educated florists are profitable florists.'"

When she accepted the award, Nichols, who has been told she often has too much to say, found words hard to come by. "You have finally rendered me speechless," she informed the gathered crowd.

The award is bestowed upon a CFA member who has exhibited outstanding accomplishments in the floral industry.

Nichols, a freelance designer and educator in Cheshire, Conn., has been working in the industry for 35 years. She is the campus director and design instructor for the CFA Design School, the state's only florist trade school.

The CFA award is the latest in a string of awards Nichols has achieved in the industry. A past CFA president, board member and convention chairwoman, she received the organization's 1997 Marketer of the Year and 1989 Designer of the Year awards. In 1996, she was honored with Floral Management magazine's Marketer of the Year award in recognition of her "Simply Said" campaign, an initiative that lured in customers with an inexpensive impulse item generating a 14 percent sales increase for Window Box Inc., the retail shop she owned for 28 years.

Although Nichols admits it is nice to be recognized, she points out that she is fully committed to "an industry that has been very good to me for many years."

--Morgan Schimminger
mschimminger@safnow.org

 

Previous Article    Next Article