Ever since I was a child, I have been able to see with my own eyes at Forever Plants how much passion and care goes into growing beautiful houseplants and into continuously predicting market movements, so that we can always offer the right products. A fine game played at a high level. Yet I quickly decided that I wanted nothing to do with it. The outside world, full of digital marvels and trendy new start-ups, was calling. I left for Rotterdam to study, confident that I would never return here. I could never have imagined that now, some 7 years later, I would make the journey from Rotterdam to the Westland every day. And with great pleasure!
The birth of Plantsome
Somewhere during my studies, a professor claimed that, as an entrepreneur, you should do something you understand better than the people around you. After looking around me, I quickly realised that for me this could only be one thing: plants! By combining this with my knowledge of technology and digital possibilities, an idea for a new startup soon took shape. Surely it should be easier for our digital generation to keep plants at home – and then keep them alive too?
This is how Plantsome came about, a webshop where you can very easily find your ideal houseplant and have it delivered to your home the next day. With the Plantsome app you can then keep your plants alive. It sends a notification when your plant needs water and also shows you the ideal amount.
Now, my expertise lies mainly in online strategies and not so much in transporting plants. This brought me back to Forever Plants. And so began an unusual but very enjoyable marriage between a new online startup and an extensive production company that has been proving itself for decades.
Growing and blossoming
We are now almost 3 years on, and this year we have shipped roughly 30,000 plants with Plantsome to consumers and businesses throughout the Netherlands and Belgium. It is still nothing compared to the numbers shipped by Forever Plants every day, but we are working hard to catch up.
As time goes on, both companies increasingly notice the benefits of each other’s presence. For Plantsome it is enormously handy to be part of a larger organisation with knowledge of logistics processes and flexible labour available. At the same time, Forever Plants benefits greatly from Plantsome’s innovative character and its direct contact with the end consumer.
The data we collect through Plantsome is then used to learn where market demand is heading, so that we can respond to it more quickly with Forever Plants. And I will be honest: I did not see that synergy between two completely different companies coming on this scale. But it is pretty cool. As a result, the ambitions of both Forever Plants and Plantsome have only grown, and as far as I’m concerned it is the perfect example that Forever Plants really wants to be ‘the other guy’ in horticulture.
