I had the greatest pleasure of interviewing the owner of the hookah brand Nirvana, Bassem Chahine. First off I wanted thank Bassem for agreeing to the interview. Let’s get to it:
Can you tell our readers a little background information about yourself?
“I am Lebanese American, I am married with 2 children. I was born and raised in United Arab Emirates and moved to the US in 2001. I am the CEO of Medwakh.com. We at Medwakh.com manufacture Dokaha/Hookah Tobacco. I have been in this business since 2006 where I opened my first lounge in Lawrence, Kansas USA”.
What is your greatest accomplishment with the brand so far?
“Getting sold on three continents and two dozen countries”.
I think a lot of people are curious with the name Nirvana, was the brand named after the band?
” It was one of the factors that we took into consideration. We actually named of the initial flavors around the mythos of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Then we were our first big Vegas show and we were contacted by an attorney representing Courtney Loves recording label, and he advised us that if we didn’t drop some of the names and change some of the inferences that we would be in big trouble! Luckily my oldest brother who is an attorney was there, and we were able to sort everything out with the record label that afternoon. We had to drop a couple of the flavor names, changing them to something else. But that’s OK, because now it’s part of the Nirvana super Shisha mythos”.
What is your favorite hookah to smoke out off?
“I unfortunately haven’t had to smoke different styles of hookah but my favorite is an RF Russian Hookahs one of my customers gave me as a gift”.
How would you compare to Nirvana now to what was before. Any similarities or changes?
” Well the most important thing about Nirvana today is it we have re established 100% quality control over everything to do with the line. everything is made by hand, by us, in our facility. The raw tobacco is screened by us, the casing and flavoring are mixed by us, dolls is rehydrated and added by us, and then everything is bagged and packaged and boxed by us. This is true of our Original Othmani, the original Nevada Super Shisha, and also our new Nevada Eclipse dark tobacco that we’ve released. The problem with having tobacco made elsewhere by someone else is that while you still monitor for quality control, the time lag between recognizing a problem and getting the problem corrected can be quite lengthy compared to what we can do now”.
Where do you see the company in the next 10 years?
“I hope that we continue to be the world’s largest online supplier of Dokha, and I hope we continue to expand our Dokha into new markets in parts of the world that have never been exposed to our products. I hope that our Shisha products share of the market continues to grow, and I would love to see us in the top five hookah tobacco companies in the world. But I’ll gratefully take whatever is given to me, hoping for the best, because in the end that’s all one can do”.
What makes Nirvana unique compared to other brands?
“Well, the most obvious answer is that Nirvana Super Shisha and Nirvana Eclipse are the only dokha-infused shisha tobaccos in the world. However it’s not only the super buzzy dokha tobacco mix, but also the flavor-balanced mix of premium Virginia tobaccos, the uncommon flavor combinations, and let’s not forget our rather unique flavor names!
Besides smoking hookah and devoting your time to Nirvana, what do you like to do on your free time?
“I love rock climbing specially with my son, I love traveling with my wife and kids all over the world. I love being with my family man they are my everything the reason why I even sweat blood and tears for this business”.
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