Starting with 30,000 yuan, Haima (real name Qiu Yamin), founder of Heidi’s Garden, has grown into a top tier merchant and industry benchmark with annual sales exceeding 100 million yuan. Over 19 years, she has achieved a leap from product sales to industrial restructuring. At the recently held 2026 China International Floriculture & Horticulture Trade Fair, Haima gave an exclusive interview to reporters from China Flower News, sharing her explorations and insights into the industry. 

"Haima"

Seize opportunities to achieve counter--trend growth

　　Against the backdrop of a shrinking landscape engineering market and overcapacity in the industry, Heidi’s Garden has achieved an industry miracle of 19 consecutive years without declining performance. In 2025, the brand hit a new annual sales high with a steady annual growth rate of over 10%. Behind this remarkable achievement lies Haima’s long-standing strategy of focusing deeply on the consumer end since the very start of her business.

　　"I have never earned money from landscape engineering projects and have focused solely on the household consumption sector from start to finish," Haima confessed. Demand in the landscape industry is planned and cyclical, whereas consumer-side demand is more sustained and stable. While most industry practitioners were waiting for the engineering market to rebound, she had already achieved precise positioning of product mix and customer groups. From small potted plants for balcony planting to perennial flowers for courtyard landscaping, and from basic maintenance guides to garden-lifestyle content, all of the company’s strategies center on "bringing gardening into everyday life."

　　In Haima’s view, the biggest misconception in the industry is regarding flowers merely as agricultural products while ignoring their emotional value and lifestyle aesthetics. Through shooting documentaries, writing hundreds of thousands of words of gardening books, and hosting over 1,000 live-streaming sessions, she has continuously conveyed core concepts to consumers such as “plants ease anxiety” and “gardening is a way of life”. Such in-depth cultivation of the consumer market has kept Heidi’s Garden on a steady upward trajectory, proving the enormous potential of the consumer-oriented market.

Live-streaming for flowers is more than just selling goods

　　As a pioneer in flower-related live-streaming, Haima has been deeply engaged in this sector for a decade, witnessing the whole process of live-streaming evolving from a boom trend to a normal practice. In her opinion, the greatest value of live-streaming for the flower industry lies not in short-term sales surges, but in addressing the core pain point of "lack of public awareness" in the industry.

　　"Many consumers know very little about flowers," Haima stated. The consumption threshold in the flower industry lies in cognitive barriers, and live-streaming undertakes the important task of industry popularization in a low-cost and scenario-based way. Through the camera, she takes viewers to visit planting bases, demonstrates repotting and pruning skills on site, and answers frequently-asked questions such as "why flowers fail to survive", making professional gardening knowledge easy to understand.

　　Today, live-streaming has become one of the core operational scenarios for Heidi’s Garden. However, Haima emphasizes that live-streaming is not a one-off transaction, but a build-up of trust. Her live streams never pursue high-gross-profit best-selling products. Instead, she follows the principles of "high quality, easy maintenance, low cost and low price" to generate profits through rapid inventory turnover. This model not only avoids the common industry dilemma of "vicious competition triggered by high profits", but also brings gardening products into ordinary households.

　　"We have a population of 1.4 billion, and the potential of the flower consumption market remains huge," said Haima.

The Dual Dilemma of the Flower Industry

　　In Haima’s view, the flower industry is currently going through its toughest transition period, with core contradictions centered on two major issues: overcapacity and lagging transformation. As demand in the landscape engineering market becomes saturated, there has been severe overcapacity for arbors, shrubs, herbaceous flowers and other varieties originally supplied to the engineering sector. She predicts that the industry needs to phase out 50% to 80% of its production capacity to achieve supply-demand balance.“

　　"Many practitioners are still waiting for the market to pick up, but the golden age of the landscape industry is over," Haima stated bluntly. The biggest crisis facing the industry is not a poor market, but rigid mindsets. Most growers still plant blindly following trends, lacking insight into consumer-side demands, which leads to a disconnect between products and the market. More critically, flower products are special as they are "living inventory". Unlike clothing and bags that can be stored long-term, unsold flowers require continuous maintenance costs, further increasing operational pressure on practitioners.

　　In addition, the industry suffers from insufficient product standardization and distorted profit logic. "Some flower varieties once triggered reckless capacity expansion due to high profits, only to decline amid price wars and even disappear entirely from product lines," Haima said. The flower industry is inherently unsuitable for high gross profit margins. Excessive pursuit of short term profits will only accelerate product elimination. Only by standardized production and rapid turnover to achieve small-profit-but-high-volume sales can long-term sustainable development be realized.

Restructuring the Ecological Chain of the Flower Industry

　　Not long ago, Xinghai Flower Industrial Park, with a total investment of over 700 million yuan and covering an area of 3,318 mu, was completed and opened in Shuangliu, Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Haima is one of the core merchants to settle in the park at the initial stage. By building a whole-chain ecological model integrating production, sales, services and cultural tourism, she aims to create a model for the transformation of the flower industry. Its core logic is to break the single production-oriented attribute of traditional nurseries and realize the clustered development of the industry.

　　For the operation of the industrial park, Haima has innovatively put forward the production concept of "division of labor by climate". Leveraging the climatic advantages of different regions, differentiated industrial clusters are formed: Kunming focuses on off-season products such as phalaenopsis and blueberries, South China concentrates on foliage plants, Beijing specializes in perennial plants, and Guilin features characteristic varieties like osmanthus. Regional collaboration helps avoid homogeneous competition nationwide. Meanwhile, the industrial park adopts the "container nursery" model, with all products supplied as potted plants suitable for both commercial spaces and household scenarios, completely breaking reliance on the engineering market.

　　On the sales side, a new retail network integrating online and offline channels has been built. According to Haima, merchants in the industrial park can sell goods via live-streaming within garden-themed settings, reaching nationwide customers through centralized management. Meanwhile, with the strategy of "commercial space integration", flower products are incorporated into restaurants, office buildings, barbershops and other venues, enabling consumers to buy flowers conveniently right downstairs. In addition, the industrial park is equipped with supporting facilities including multiple theme gardens, catering and entertainment services, and gardening training centers. It upgrades production bases into cultural-tourism attractions and extends the industrial chain through traffic monetization.

　　Haima believes that the steady development of the industrial park cannot be achieved without government support. Cooperation with stateowned platform companies ensures the long-term stability of industrial development. This cooperation model not only safeguards public interests but also grants enterprises sufficient operational flexibility, laying a solid foundation for the clustered development of the industry.

Bring flowers into thousands of households

　　From single-product sales to industrial restructuring, every strategic move Haima makes centers on one simple yet steadfast goal: “Let flowers bloom across the land, and let plants serve a better life for more people.” In her view, the core value of gardening lies not only in aesthetic experience, but also in the emotional healing and vitality it brings.

　　"The vigorous vitality of plants is the best remedy for relieving anxiety," Haima believes. In the fast-paced modern society, gardening offers people a rare sense of relaxation. Moreover, the social interaction and sense of achievement gained from planting are irreplaceable by other hobbies. She hopes that by replicating and promoting the industrial park model, every city with a population of over ten million can have a similar garden industrial cluster, allowing more children to grow up surrounded by gardens and making greenery a normal part of daily life.

　　Haima is full of confidence in the future of the industry. She believes that China’s flower industry is in a transition period "from making a living to pursuing a better life". Despite numerous current challenges, the industry is bound to embrace new development opportunities as long as it taps into consumer-side demand and addresses pain points through model innovation and industrial collaboration. Just like the plant spirit she advocates: "Take root in adversity and bloom after gathering strength." The transformation of the flower industry may be a long journey, yet with the right direction, every step forward brings it closer to the goal.

　　As a pioneer in the industry, Haima has demonstrated the potential of the flower industry through 19 years of perseverance and innovation. She said, "In the future, as more practitioners join the transformation toward the consumer-oriented market, the flower industry will surely embrace a promising vision where flowers bloom in thousands of households."