Gardenuity wants to be the Mary Kay of gardening.
The Dallas-based company is using direct marketing, or social selling as it’s been rebranded, to sell gardening and garden-related products to consumers who may have never grown a plant before.
Donna Spafford Letier, a company founder who lives near Turtle Creek, calls it “garden-inspired living.”
“I think it’s a great time to marry gardening and social selling,” Letier says. “We’re bringing new gardeners to the market.”
Letier, 52, and her longtime friend and business associate Julie Eggers, 55, were social sellers for years with another company and were looking for a new opportunity. Both were interested in the local food movement.
The pair saw data showing an increasing interest in gardening and a growing number of young adults cultivating their own food. That information led them to conclude there was a void in the market and an opening for them, Letier says.
The entrepreneurs began designing a business that would help nongardeners get started. They also wanted to help those with little time and little space get a taste of growing their own edibles.
With the motto “from patio to table,” the two enlisted horticulture experts to help develop foolproof garden products and also began trying to use the products themselves.
Trendy grow bags were their first find. These containers look much like reusable grocery totes and are made of a breathable, weatherproof textile that drains well. The bags often are cheaper than traditional garden pots, are lighter and can be reused for many seasons.
The gardening consultants paired the bags with seeds packed in little squares made of dissolving paper. The packaging makes it easier to correctly plant the seeds, Eggers says.
They created a kit with the bag, seeds, growing medium, compost, even disposable gloves. As a finishing touch, the type of garden — salad greens, herbs — was monogrammed on the bags.
“You wait 10 days and have little sprouts,” says Eggers, whose husband is a gardener with raised beds in the backyard. Her garden is a line of grow bags along a walkway. “I feel as proud of my grow bags as he is of his raised beds,” she says.
The company, represented online as gardenuity.com, also markets individual bags and seed squares, along with other gardening containers and tools.
Gardenuity expanded to what Letier calls garden lifestyle products such as hand cream, body scrub, candles, decor, flavored salts, salsas, rubs and specially blended loose-leaf teas.
The products were researched by Letier, Eggers and their marketing team. All are natural and organic. Most are produced in the United States, many of them in the Dallas area and specifically for the company, Letier says.
After years with the direct-sales company Celebrating Home, Letier and Eggers began recruiting a sales network. People have asked Letier if she is the Tupperware or Mary Kay of gardening. “Yes,” she says.
The mother of two likes the social selling structure because it allows team members to work on their own schedules and develop business skills.
Eggers likes the sales structure because it includes education for both associates and customers. Gardenuity helps associates set up their businesses and teaches bookkeeping techniques.
Shopping events may include gardening techniques and information about good nutrition. “When the book Fifty Shades of Kale came out, events around that went really well,” Letier says.
Personalization is the key to sales, Letier says.
“If you can tell a mom, ‘If you eat kale three times a week, this is what it’s going to do for your kid on the crew team,’ that’s personal,” she says.
The company has produced an app that allows associates to personalize a garden plan on the spot. The associate asks a few questions: What vegetables does your family like? What area do you have for a garden? What’s your ZIP code?
“She puts that into the app and it comes back with a plan for that area, the best vegetables to grow all year round,” Letier says.
The associate punches in the order, and Gardenuity fills it and ships it directly to the customer.
Leigh Jolas in University Park, one of the first associates, says she’s been successful with the company’s support and by emphasizing the personal touch. Earlier this year, she invited 15 of her friends to lunch to talk about roses.
“Each person’s place had a single-stemmed rose, and I burned our wonderful rose-scented candles,” Jolas says. An expert showed roses and talked about the best way to grow them.
“After lunch, people were so excited,” says Jolas. “It really wasn’t hard to get them to fill out the order form.”.
Jolas, 51, was a friend of Letier’s when they were younger but hadn’t seen her for 20 years. They ran into each other at a football game, and Letier began explaining the Gardenuity concept to Jolas. Her high-schoolers will be heading off to college and Jolas was looking for a new career.
“My No. 1 hobby is gardening,” Jolas says.
She now has a 23-member team, dubbed Bloom and Grow, scattered around the country. It includes a woman in Virginia, a man in Illinois and many Texas members. Jolas holds two or three events a month. Her best event brought in $3,000 in orders, she says.
The company has about 300 associates nationwide. Letier says they’ve stopped accepting new sellers for a short time while they move the fulfillment center to Dallas.
She sees a bright future for the company. “It’s human nature to want to watch something grow.”
Karel Holloway is a Terrell freelance writer.
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