Jimmy Shamim: How do we keep plants alive? How do we stop our partners from murdering plants?
Jared Carlin: We're definitely not the only ones. And at the time there was a paper released that said, you know, Australians killed 72 million plants that year.
Jimmy Shamim: It's been really good from a stickiness perspective. If we actually look at it, we have a 0.2% churn rate, which is amazing for an app subscription.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Here's your host, Bush Bushy. Hello everyone and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Bushy and I am joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia at Add to Cart. We welcome everyone to share, learn and celebrate e commerce stories and have I got a story for you today. Have you ever found yourself staring at a dying plant wondering what the hell went wrong here? I don't, because I've learned my lesson in life and I've filled my office with plastic plants. But if you did have this realization, know that you are not alone. About 72 million household plants are killed by Australians every year. According to our guests, Australian plant owners are killing seven to nine plants each every year. You are green handed murderers, the lot of you. But what if there was a way to stop that? Today's guests are here to help you keep your plants thriving, not just surviving. Joining me today is Jared Carlin and Jimmy Shamim, the co founders behind Plant with Willow. It's an innovative smart home tech designed to keep houseplants alive. Their startup has captured the attention of plant lovers and tech enthusiasts alike with the successful Kickstarter campaign and and now, hot off the press, their recent partnership with Bunnings. In this episode, we are going to dive into how Plant with Willow went from an idea during COVID to landing in connected households all over the world. We talk about the power of customer feedback in building a successful tech product and how to manage that when there's already so much on your roadmap. We dive into that strategic partnership with Bunnings that goes well beyond just putting product on a shelf. And I know this is the part that you really want. The guys lift the lid on the most common ways that we are killing houseplants and how to prevent it with Willow. If you haven't already, I'd love to invite you in to sign up for my weekly e commerce newsletter. Every Tuesday morning I send it out and it includes my take on a key issue for the industry as well as Five stories, whether that be research, news or case studies that I think e commerce practitioners need to know about. You can sign up for free over@add to cart.com subscribe. Let's get into it. A big thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Deliver in person. Let's get into our plant conversation with Jared and Jimmy of Plant with Willow. Jared and Jimmy, welcome to ADD to cart.
Jared Carlin: Thinking you.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, thanks for having us.
[Voiceover]: Great to have you here. I feel like a bit of a fraud looking over my shoulder right now as we're speaking at my plants that are in my office. 100 fake.
Jared Carlin: I was about to say that Monstera is looking awfully green or I'm really good at it.
[Voiceover]: All right, so we are going to talk a lot about plants and ecom and tech today. But to kick us off, can you share what plant with Willow is?
Jared Carlin: So we are here to save the I suppose the serial plant killers of the world, the plant safe cacti owners. So we've developed a hardware and software tool that helps keep plants alive at its core. Right. We're all about keeping plants happy and thriving.
[Voiceover]: Great. And not having plastic plants.
Jared Carlin: And not having plastic plants. Yeah. No shade. But now ideally the real ones.
[Voiceover]: Have you always been plant lovers?
Jared Carlin: Yes, but so much more obviously now with a plant based or tech startup you definitely drink the Kool Aid and obviously watch the the number of plants grow.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, I think I went from my partner, had a lot of plants and now I start to take care of them. I've actually used a product all the time, which is amazing for me because I love tech and then this is just helping me keep my plants alive.
[Voiceover]: Great. So for our listeners who don't have visuals in front of them, can you explain how it works?
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, of course. So we have a sensor that you will essentially pair with an app. So really simple setup. You put it into your plant, you can either scan to identify the plant and it'll tell you what plant it is or if you know what plant it is, you can search for it. You'll pair it via hub and then put it into your plant. Give it a couple of days while we collect the data on it and understand the environment and then we'll just start sending you any notifications. So if it needs water and it'll be your plant saying, hey, it's me, Monty. Call the plant Monty, I need water please will you give me a drink or I'm thirsty. And you can set whether it's in a sassy tone or whether it's just More so of like, directly of what it needs. So, yeah, we built it to be really super simple and just essentially remove the guesswork.
[Voiceover]: That's cool. And it's got a sensor, like a little spike that you put in the plant. Right. To monitor in real time.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: And do you find many people are naming their plants?
Jared Carlin: You have to, as part of it, I suppose it call. It serves a function in that knowing that that sensor is paired with that plant. So, you know, you do have some users, not boring, but, you know, naming their plant the plant or, you know, large lounge room plant. And then you have some people being really creative with the names, and it's certainly fun seeing that come through.
[Voiceover]: I bet it's like wi fi names where people try and be as creative as possible.
Jared Carlin: Yeah, absolutely. You definitely get quite a few of those.
Jimmy Shamim: And then there's a few we can't really probably repeat on the podcast.
[Voiceover]: But come on, give us one
Jimmy Shamim: if Jared wants to.
Jared Carlin: No, no, that's okay.
[Voiceover]: We'll keep plant names pg. And so how did you come up with the idea? Because I've never seen it before.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, so, I mean, it was during COVID So Jared's wife and my partner at the time were killing a lot of plants. I think everybody in Covid, Right. You're working from home, people bringing plants indoors because of not only the aesthetic benefit, but also the mental health benefit side of it as well. And they were just killing plants. And we're both problem solvers, and we just had a discussion of, surely there's a better way to do this. So that's what we looked at. We just started exploring how do we keep plants alive, how do we stop our partners from murdering plants.
Jared Carlin: Yeah. And I think any successful or scalable startup, you kind of need not just us experiencing that issue. So it's about trying to find a large enough group of people that share that common problem. And. And, you know, once we started the clipboarding, the researching, the surveying, it was, no, no, we're definitely not the only ones. And at the time, there was a paper released that said, you know, Australians killed 72 million plants that year, and we weren't the only contributors to that. So it was definitely. Okay, there's. There's definitely something here. Let's now start tackling the solution side of things.
[Voiceover]: That's almost three plants per Australian.
Jared Carlin: Yeah, well, I think it's, you know, at the same time, it's. The average person has. Yeah. Has killed at least seven or nine from memory, so that's more.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: Under baking it what's the main reason that people kill plants?
Jared Carlin: The biggest one is not often what people think. It's like neglect is a thing, but more often than not it's over loving plants. So it's the idea that oh, my plant's not looking too well, I better give it some water or it's really not looking well. I'll give it some more water. And in actual fact, you're the one making it not look so good by the repeated. So over watering's a massive problem. And then the next common thing is really my plant looks great on this shelf or looks great next to this TV here, but has no view of a window or a light source and I wonder why it's not doing too well. So those, yeah, the two big ones are really around watering and light.
[Voiceover]: So your app will identify what kind of plant it is based on the camera and then we'll monitor the environment, I'm assuming in terms of wet light. Anything else that it's monitoring to make sure it's getting the right levels based on the plant variety?
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, there's also the temperature and humidity as well. So we measure those four factors. So it's anything within the plant environment that we're measuring that's a critical element of it.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Okay. And you've had 51 million sensor readings so far, which I read. Have you had anything that's come back like once you've collected all that data that's really surprised you or some unexpected insights that you've discovered about plants during that time?
Jared Carlin: Yeah, I mean a couple of things. It's one being, you know, you'll go to your local plant store and you might see these tags that says easy care plant and the fact that over through that 51 million sensor readings plus and all the plants that are paired to our app, it's the easy care ones are the most paired the most that people have. So there's definitely that aspect of, you know, when we were looking at our customers and what they were trying to do by purchasing Willow, it was I've killed bamboo, I'm useless at keeping care of plants. And that shines through or proves true when you look at the type of plants that people have within our rapid and using it. And then the flip side of that is I suppose we have quite a lot of users with perhaps less popular run of the mill plants that are really trusting Willow with quite expensive plants. So we see a lot of Thai constellation plants and things like that. So it's really about protecting their investment. You know, how Much are we talking
[Voiceover]: for those kind of plants?
Jared Carlin: It's 150plus, depending on the size. You know, it. It also scales and plants go through their peak or their time to shine. You know, during COVID you definitely had, you know, pink philodendrons. You had time on sterers growing in popularity. And then you start to see cuttings on Facebook Marketplace going for absolutely insane amounts. And then you kind of, as the commercial nurseries kind of catch up to the demand, the price comes back the other way. But certainly if you're spending, you know, more than $200 on a plant, you. You want to definitely try and maintain that run.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, that makes sense. And you mentioned before when you had the idea, you went out and tested it with others to make sure that others had the same problem that you were seeing in the market. I believe that you kicked off with a Kickstarter campaign. Is that right?
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, we did. So, interestingly, we were like, how do we take an idea from Western Australia and actually test it in a global market? Especially before we prototype the solution? But we didn't have a commercially available solution. So I'd had a bit of experience prior in building a similar sort of platform to Kickstarter. So I was like, this would be a perfect opportunity. So that's where we tested it. We were like. I mean, the interesting story is that we were like. We were like, let's just do it. That's Jared and I's philosophy for quite a lot of stuff, actually. So. And it was like, all right, how do we actually do this? How do we actually run a successful Kickstarter campaign? So it was an interesting journey. I think we took about seven weeks to get everything ready for Kickstarter, from a story to the video ads, to all the rewards we were going to offer. Just everything. The landing page is everything. Seven weeks. And we were just.
Jared Carlin: The manufacturing plan, the roadmap. Yeah, all of it.
[Voiceover]: Yep. And did you hit your target?
Jimmy Shamim: We did, yes. Yeah. So it wasn't too. We actually doubled the target in what we wanted, but we didn't test it from a. I think people use Kickstarter for different reasons. We didn't use it to raise funds in a traditional sense. We used it to test global scale of our concept.
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Jared Carlin: Oh yeah, it's kind of all over. The bigger markets I think are more what you might expect. You know behind Australia you had the US and the UK, but you know, post Kickstarter we've now sold to 28 countries and you've got some really kind of obscure smaller ones, unexpected there, that sensor over there, two over there, which has been great.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, we don't advertise it that much but we have a free app as well. So the app that you can just use for general plant care tips, in fact we got users in over 100 countries, now we've got them in every continent. It's crazy and it's so crazy for me, Jared, sometimes just to look at it and go, that's amazing. There's people in Chile using our app and our product.
[Voiceover]: You're collecting some incredible data. I can imagine that there's a lot of use cases going through your head that are beyond just a D2C E commerce brand.
Jimmy Shamim: Absolutely. It comes down to chasing shiny objects. I think startups, and especially early stage startups and founders, you're quite innovative in your thinking anyway, so then everything seems like what is the next thing we can do but with so many adjacent markets, so many different product lines that we want to go to and like you said, so many use cases. I think it's just strategically working our way through that so that we don't end up overloading ourselves and not operating to our best capacity in the markets we're in. So I think for our focus now is let's actually scale globally, let's scale outside of Australia properly. Whilst we've achieved scale, we've not got any infrastructure set up anywhere else. And then once we've taken over, once we've established a D2C footprint in areas. Let's then establish physical retail from there. Let's then look at office spaces, let's look at Airbnbs. There's a lot of adjacent type opportunities where people need plants and have plants and want them to stay alive. Right. So. But yeah, it's for chasing shiny objects in your own that we try to mitigate. Otherwise I'd be everywhere.
[Voiceover]: I can imagine. So tell us about the D2C set up that you've launched with. You've got a beautiful website. It's really actually a lot of fun to look around. Beautiful brand that you've set up. Actually, before we get into D2C, where did the plant with Willow come from? Where the name come from?
Jared Carlin: It's quite simply we wanted something that is friendly, relatable to people and quite plant based. You know, from, from a tech side, you know, you've Ask Siri, ask Alexa. We kind of wanted that version, but a bit cuter. So it was around the idea that you're planting with Willow. Whether that be our sensors, whether that be our app, whether that be just general advice, reading the blogs, you know, there's a few different ways you can do that and we wanted something all encompassing for that.
[Voiceover]: Beautiful. And so from a DTC perspective, customers need to buy the starter kit, is that right? To get started.
Jared Carlin: Can get started with as many sensors as they like. The starter kit is more, I suppose, the entry point from a price perspective. It gives you one hub and one sensor and then we sell packs in three and five which allow you to start your journey. Yeah, start your journey here. Start saving plants.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, start saving plants. We need the hub. So the hub's the first critical piece of infrastructure that you need and from there you can pair up to 40 sensors with a hub.
[Voiceover]: And I suppose a lot of people are used to that setup because it seems pretty similar to the connected lights set up in a home where you need a hub to add more lights to that very similar setup.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, absolutely. And this comes down to understanding your consumer and what they're willing to pay for a product. We could build, say a WI FI chip natively into the sensor. Right. But how much are you going to pay to keep your plant alive as opposed to just going buying a new plant? And then when you start talking about sort of infrastructure on a sensor, how long is the battery going to last? Are you going to recharge it? You're going to keep having to take it out your plant every few days to recharge It So we had to build a product that people were used to using. So people are used to setting up smart home systems with hubs and just maintain a price point that makes sense.
[Voiceover]: What's a sensor worth?
Jimmy Shamim: 39.95 Australian dollars. It obviously reduces them in the packs, but that's where we started out. Yeah, yeah, great.
[Voiceover]: And shipping internationally or just to Australia at this point?
Jimmy Shamim: No, we ship internationally like I said. We just don't advertise outside of Australia currently. But we have quite a few purchases come through. They must see us on socials maybe or whatnot. Word of mouth maybe from a Kickstarter, but we have quite a few orders come through.
Jared Carlin: Yeah, you definitely can. The. I suppose the issue remains that, you know, our warehousing's in Australia so you're welcome to buy it internationally, but it also comes with a decent shipping price depending on where you are or how far away from Australia, which we've had people pay for and love. And I think that works to us setting up global infrastructure to better deal with those needs.
[Voiceover]: Does it get difficult when people are scanning in exotic plants from all over the world in terms of your matching database or is your matching database set up to be global from day one?
Jared Carlin: A bit of both. So, you know, we, we definitely did a chunk of research and worked with our horticulturists around what are the most common plants. We had to obviously start with a level of plants, but the app has the ability to suggest plants, whether that is from, as you said, from the photo scan or whether you just go into the feature and saying I want xyz. They then get loaded into a list and are kind of ranked by the amount of people suggesting them, which kind of prioritizes it for our team to add to the database. But yeah, the problem is, and not so much a problem, but the fun plant loving world is all the hybrids, right. People mixing this plant and this plant and then we think we've got a good base covered and then introducing, you know, so we've definitely got a growing database and happy to keep it going.
[Voiceover]: And yeah, does it work in the wild as well or would it only work in a house plant?
Jared Carlin: Definitely indoor use only to start with. Right. So a few things on that. You know, obviously it's only as strong as your Bluetooth or wi fi network to begin with with the hub setup as well as, you know, it's, it's housing a battery, it's in a reasonably good waterproofing dust proofing sensor. But that's not to say you know, you put it out in a storm for, you know, for the winter rep. Yeah.
Jimmy Shamim: And it just comes back to the same adage as earlier, that outdoor garden care introduce its own set of problems and needs for the customer. Indoors has its own. So it's like, let's focus on actually getting that nailed down and understanding that we actually solve a customer's problem. And then let's look at outdoor, because that's a whole new product, as Jared
Jared Carlin: said, and indoors, controllable rut, or at least to a better degree. You know, it sits, it's heater off, it's aircon on, it's et cetera, outdoors. You know, that's Mother Nature.
[Voiceover]: And from a. I think from a D2C perspective, too, it's a lot easier with your marketing to be able to say, this is the exact problem we're solving to stop you killing house plants, which we all know is a very common thing. Right. Yes.
Jared Carlin: It's also a test in itself. Right. We're very indoor houseplants. But it doesn't stop people suggesting fruit trees and everything else saying, we really want you to cover this. And we're like, it's in a roadmap. But let's start with the indoor buttes first.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah. That was a crazy challenge initially, was we launched for free app first. Right. As a funnel. So top of funnel. Let's get people into a free app, get them using the Willow brand, and then we can upsell them the sensors from there when we launch them. But actually articulating the value proposition was a challenge initially, because we'd have people download the app and then leave a negative review because we don't have a variation of a wild rose that grows outdoors in northern Canada.
Jared Carlin: Right.
Jimmy Shamim: Or something like that. So. And we'd be like, we, like, are we just not stating clearly enough? So we had to go through that full challenge of how we actually communicate Willow as a brand and what it is.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah. And have you had any customer feedback, though, that you're like, oh, actually, that's a bloody good idea. We need to implement that. Or is it still a case of you've got enough ideas that you want to implement that you're not even entertaining that yet?
Jared Carlin: No, I think. I mean, we did close to 12 app releases the last year, and the bulk of those were largely features suggested by users. So we have that feedback loop within the app in terms of what you're liking, what you're not liking, what you would like to see. And then it's again, the product team internally and our development team about prioritizing those things. But certainly we've had a pretty big range from large features. You know, one springs to mind is our kind of Thrive or Survive. In chatting to users, there was a lot of case of, hey, you're telling me I'm not getting enough light? Are you telling me to do these things? But my plant looks pretty healthy and there's varying degrees of that. You know, healthy when your leaf size is quite small and it's green and it's happy, but under different conditions, you know, that plant could actually be a three meter tree. And it's about how much do you want to grow and really have a statement plant? First you bought the plant indoors, you're happy with its size and you just want to kind of keep it humming along. So we've introduced the ability for users to select Survive if they just want to maintain its current status as it were, and then Thrive if they're really looking for that kind of next level growth.
[Voiceover]: That's cool. That's better than telling someone their baby's ugly.
Jared Carlin: That's right.
[Voiceover]: What's been the craziest home setup that you've seen? Have you seen any like, any data coming? You're like, oh my God, there's a whole like forest of plants happening in this house.
Jared Carlin: Yeah. So we do have a really great mix of, you know, users who have maybe bought the plant parent pack, have three sensors and are like, oh my God, I've kept my first few plants alive. This is amazing. But versus some people with, you know, 20, 30 senses, a real showing of an indoor jungle. Repeat purchases, showing that loyalty to the product, which is amazing. And really starting to see a very large Willow ecosystem within their home, which is also super cool to see. And then you've kind of got some real tech enthusiasts kind of taking that to the next level by integrating our system with other systems that they have. So, you know, we've got a couple of users that use Willow to let them know when to water and then they have a different system that they can automate around the self dripping and watering of those plants while they're traveling abroad. So that was kind of pretty cool to see an experience. And the user sent some photos of this set up and you're like, yeah, okay, that's.
[Voiceover]: And do you allow. Is it all open API to allow customers to integrate to other connected home automations?
Jimmy Shamim: Not as of yet. Again, that came down to decision making at product level. When we started going for product development, when we were on Kickstarter, we had a lot of customers, early adopters to technology, saying, hey, I want open API home automation. But as we've launched to mass market, we've actually seen that go down. I think it'd be the exception to the rule. It's somewhere where we, we've identified as moving into. But that's still an ever changing landscape. I think it's only last year that Google and Apple decided to use a standardized protocol across. So just navigating that because it just becomes a huge burden on the development team. So it was like, let's really, let's really solve the problem of keeping plants alive first and helping people either thrive versus survive and then let's look at how we actually bring in and enhance the technological side, the home automation space.
Jared Carlin: And I think to add to that, yeah, you just have different customer Personas. Right. You've got people who want to use Willow. It's discreetly put in their plant. They get the notification, they're helping care of their plants, that's their interaction with Willow. And then you kind of have the tech enthusiasts that are far more involved and, and want to get access to the data and want to jump into things and, and want to combine it with all their other aspects. But usually it's a customer coming from the I'm having issues with keeping my plants alive rather than the I've got to have everything in my house wired up. And so I love that different versions there.
[Voiceover]: It's a really good point because the space that you're in, I mean, we spend a lot of time talking about AI and machine learning as you know, the next frontier of technology. But we forget how far the connected home has come in a short amount of years in terms of you talking about changes of standards, changes in expectations, changes in common devices around the home. I love that you've just said actually we're here just to look after the plants and we'll take the technology where the technology needs to go. But it's definitely not us being the leaders in the tech.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, it was always that decision from the start. Personally, I love tech. I will buy every single piece of tech that is available. I'm a tech guy. We recently come back from Europe and my partner and I were like, we need everything smart in our house. I love tech, but from a product perspective you end up chasing your tail a little bit and not actually solving your core problem first. Like I said, but that doesn't discount away. But that's absolutely where we see our product integrate and it's just let's just take it step by step and just navigate a little bit.
[Voiceover]: Well, talking about step by step, you had a big step this year. Tell us about Bunnings and how that partnership came about.
Jimmy Shamim: It's an amazing win for the team. Not just us two personally as a founders, but the wider team. The amount of work that the team puts in from a creative perspective, content, everything that goes like in the background of a database and a product, just to be able to get that recognition of a national brand like Bunnings for us, even international at one stage. But it came about essentially. We got a, we got a semi cold email. So we got given two email addresses of two potential buyers within Bunnings and it was, let's reach out to them and just see. We both was like, if it lands, maybe they'll say we're too early, maybe they'll have never heard of us, maybe they're not interested, but let's just see. And then that just eventuated into a meeting in Melbourne with them. And I think there's a lot of synergies with Willow like and Bunnings as a whole. Australian owned brands. You can buy a plant from Bunnings and take it back if you kill it within a year. So I think we can help them keep their plants alive. And it just eventuated from then. We've gone through, we've just executed an online test and hopefully we'll be rolling out nationally, well, and into New Zealand as well, into Vestal. So just an amazing win and really, really good for the team.
[Voiceover]: And what was their response when you sent that cold email? Had they seen a product like it before?
Jimmy Shamim: Not in the category. So in the garden care category. Absolutely not. You've had products that solved a similar problem.
[Voiceover]: Right.
Jimmy Shamim: You can buy the moisture sensors and stuff like that, but I think Bunnings as a whole are looking to innovate anyway. They always want to be at the forefront of any innovation. They've got their smart home departments now internally and each category wants to innovate within their category. So Ash from Bunnings, an amazing human being. He saw the vision of Willow and he saw the vision of where his categories go in and that's where the synergies come.
[Voiceover]: That's very cool. And when you're having those discussions with Bunnings, is it purely, let's get this product on the shelf with you or online with you, or is there a deeper conversation around how do we educate customers, how can we create content together? Is there anything at that level or is it purely Retail play initially?
Jimmy Shamim: No, it's a strategic partnership. So it's a content play. We're sharing content with them, they come back with ideas for us and also we're launching at some point in the future and can say it anyway, but an in app marketplace which is specifically around Plant carer. So if we're telling you when to fertilize or if we're saying you should use this type of soil or repot, you can buy it within the app there. So there's a strategic opportunity around that sort of thing as well. And it was just that wider partnership as opposed. And that's why we really liked working with Bunnings because it's never been approached as we're just going to sell your product and it's actually been bi directional conversation around the brand and the synergies around that.
[Voiceover]: I love that idea of the marketplace as recommendations. That's really bloody smart. Would you have that exclusive to Bunnings or would you open up to anyone?
Jared Carlin: I think it'll depend on the product line. There's certain things that amazing products that Bunning sell that would work for certain things and then certain products that they might not have available. And there's plenty of other amazing brands out there that from fertilizers to grow lights to soil to any type of even support items, fee plants and things like that. It just kind of makes sense that if we're in the app telling you it's now time to do these things, that there's a product that you can readily buy and that we've stress tested within our own world. Right within our plants and within our, with our horticulturalist team that we absolutely recommend this product and here it is.
[Voiceover]: That makes sense because it seems like there's a lot of trust that you're building up with your customers or your users, however you phrase it, because you've also got your subscription service Willow Grow. Tell us about that and the feedback you've got from those subscribers.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, it's very much been informed by user feedback. So let's use a technology segment. Like we said, some of our users want access to data, they want open APIs and stuff like that. So one of the things we built Willow initially was just to remove the guesswork and tell you when you need to do something. Then we had a segment of our customer base say, hey, yes, it's cool getting the notifications of when it wants to do something. But I really want to delve down deeper into the data because obviously it cost to us a business to start Keeping all that data and storing it and displaying it in the product development. So we looked at how do we enhance for offering through the subscription. So that's where it come from. Every feature was comes from user feedback. We were getting a lot of customer support which actually turned out into us just becoming plant doctors.
Jared Carlin: Right?
Jimmy Shamim: We were helping. The customer support wasn't about the willow products, it was about, hey, I've got this plant and the leaves are browning and I'm using willow and basically like, well maybe there's an opportunity here for to speak to a plant doctor. So all the features came through user feedback. So it's been really good from a stickiness perspective. If we actually look at it, we have a 0.2% churn rate which is amazing for an app subscription. So it's been really good, really well received. We're really excited as a team. Like we've got a lot of. We had so many feature requests from users, so many internal ideas around where we can take it. So it's been cool.
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Jared Carlin: They are and I think that's been one of the things as well. It's. People are like oh, this is like AI, it's a chat and it's like no, no, it's, it's, it's a real human being. It's. And I think we've seen other app providers in the plant care world kind of offer this service but it's a bit clunky with email, community communication and back and forth. So we made sure to kind of take that to the next level. So it's all in app. It's a, you know, it's just A chat you can go back and forth, respond to whenever you want. It's, you know, you'll get feedback and actions to complete from our horticulturist. You can go do them, you check back in. So, and that's been really well received because a lot of the time it's misinformation or a lot of conflicting information just with a Google search. So to have that kind of trust point and service point to kind of answer those questions has been super cool.
Jimmy Shamim: There was one feature that was developed internally on that and that was the ability to send GIFs because Jared was like, I only communicate with gifts. We're having gifts in the chat.
Jared Carlin: Yeah, yeah, it has to be fun as well. But it also allows us to kind of show off different features of the, the sensor as well. Right. So, you know, we'll have our users, they might have been using their sensors for a while. They might be getting recommendations that perhaps they're not getting enough light where they are or too much light and things like that. So we're now playing in that data to recommend plants that should actually go there. So that's a feature of, of Willow Grow as well that will analyze your data to date and say, hey, this is the plant that should be there. Come check it out.
[Voiceover]: You're in a cool category because somehow plants have become cool again. Right. Like so it's, it's, you know, if you're 20 something, you're like really proud of the plants, the house plants that you've got. You want to try new ones, you want to keep them alive. The, there's a lot of social content and social status in that. Do you find that Instagram, TikTok, those kind of channels are powerful in reaching new audiences for you?
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, definitely. Meta has been huge for our growth. TikTok just allows us to have so much fun, honestly, in our office. We recently moved into a new office purposely. We've got a massive greenhouse, really cool plant lab in big content creation area. I just come back from holiday and I walked into the office and all the team are in there filming TikToks and everybody. I love Tick Tock as a platform anyway, and it just helps us reach a new audience. But yeah, definitely Instagram and TikTok.
Jared Carlin: Yeah. And I think that's been a theme from the get go, you know, pre product, you know, pre solution, pre building anything. We kind of started to build our audiences around plant humor. It was, you know, we're playing the, the daily meme post around the difficulties or realities of I Suppose of plant care. Right. And then we carried that through our, our Kickstarter, I suppose video. You know, running Kickstarter, you can, you typically either have the founders, you know, sitting on the couch introducing themselves or you have the kind of flashy tech video and we kind of looked at them and went that doesn't feel like us.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah.
Jared Carlin: And made a full I suppose, skit around therapy and how that relates to plants and, and that's, that's kind of been our vibe from the get go.
[Voiceover]: I love it. I enjoyed the videos. I think it was on TikTok, the animated videos that you've got of the plans coming to life. Yeah, it's good fun. It's a fun brand.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a kind of culture we try to build as well. Especially when we're hiring and stuff. In early stage we've been just trying to build, hire people similar to us. We are very loud human beings who are just constantly just having a laugh and the whole team and just trying to build that vibrant team. And you can probably see that in the content we create. No one takes themselves seriously. Everyone checks their ego at the door and we just come in every day and I've, I literally, I say this, I know it's a bit biased but I love going to work.
[Voiceover]: It's amazing. Speaking of that, I saw you've just hired performance specialist and you mentioned before that you are in Perth. What's the talent market like over in Perth? We're obviously a bit shielded from it over on the east coast. E commerce thriving over on the west coast.
Jimmy Shamim: Yeah, absolutely. We put this out nationally. The job advert for the performance marketer just had someone accept in Perth. There's a lot of agency in Perth. A lot of cool stuff happens in Perth. There is quite a few ecom brands based out of Perth. Don't get me wrong, there's more skill set outside just purely because of the numbers. But it's a really cool vibrant scene, isn't it?
Jared Carlin: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's been really telling from our core hires in starting our team that, you know, our hardware engineering team in developing the sensor has all been Perth based, which might be unexpected for a few people but we've been able to find the subject matter expertise, whether that be in the plant realm, whether that be in the hardware, the software side of things. Marketing has been really great to grow that team from here. That's awesome.
[Voiceover]: All right, so we've covered a lot of ground and just some of the areas that we've covered. I'm like, oh, my God, you guys are doing so much. Even though the majority of our chat is about you staying focused on keeping plants alive, We've talked about D2C presence, we've talked about a subscription app, we've talked about just creating an app, full stop. A Bunnings partnership and then all the data that you're collecting. What's next for you guys over the next 12 months? What's your focus area?
Jimmy Shamim: The immediate one is for us to scale infrastructure growing globally, whether that's through free PLs, whether it's owned infrastructure, whether it's through distribution agreements, that's our next one. Let's enhance our footprint outside of audits. Let's really look at what our product roadmap looks like. Let's continue to improve our product and continue to bring new features that people want and then let's keep building a cool team. Right? We've got, as you said, you just checked a long list of things and then I'm going, oh, no, have we got enough people to do all of this? So it's like, let's grow the team, let's. And keep having fun every day.
Jared Carlin: Yeah, absolutely. I think we've got cool things coming in the app from the marketplace side of things, as well as small features that users have suggested. We've got tackling and bringing on larger distribution partners such as Bunnings, and then we've got the global scale to get an infrastructure full point there. It's always nonstop, all systems go within the team. And, yeah, it's always fun. I think you kind of set those yearly goals, quarterly goals, even monthly goals. And you look at it, this list is,
[Voiceover]: we're trying to be disciplined here. Yeah, that's it for the international expansion. Are you considering Amazon at all or are you trying to stay D2C?
Jimmy Shamim: We're still exploring opportunities. Obviously, you can tell from my accent from the UK originally. So I used to shop on Amazon all the time. When I got to Australia, that was my biggest book bearer. Why can't I have something delivered, like within a few hours on the next day? Well, look at it. It can kill you as a business if you're not quite set up for it. We're in the exploration phase. Let's look. Not going to promise either way.
[Voiceover]: Beautiful. All right, so if we've got some plant lovers who are a bit excited by what you've shared today and want to stop killing their own plants, where do they go to learn more and get in touch?
Jared Carlin: I mean, the simplest one is plantwithwillow.com or on socials. Plantwithwillow au lovely.
[Voiceover]: And when are we keeping an eye out for Bunnings?
Jared Carlin: Yeah, that's it. So right now, available online, bunnings.com you can come check out the brand, check out the products that are there, and then also we've grown a decent kind of retail offering until now, so you can check us out in the pigeonholes across Australia and independent retailers as well. So it's all available on plantwithwillow.com I'd say that's the King Golf.
[Voiceover]: Love it. Jared, Jimmy, thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart.
Jimmy Shamim: Thank you very much.
Jared Carlin: Thank you.
[Voiceover]: Did I catch you just then running around your house checking the health of your plants to make sure they're healthy? Not too much water, not enough sunlight. How are they going? Happy. If not, you might need a little bit of willow in your life. I didn't realize how much of a big problem that killing plants is. And in a sad way, it made me feel better about my efforts today. But what a fantastic conversation with Jared and Jimmy, two founders who have turned a common problem that, to be honest, most of us knew about, but they were able to turn into a real unique solution. Here are my main takeaways. Number one, balancing tech innovation with core problem solving. As Jared and Jimmy were talking, I found myself drifting into all the potential applications, thinking about how it could be used for commercial use, outside use, maybe even monetizing the data that they've got. But to their point, their job is keeping houseplants alive. And they do a brilliant job to remind us to stay focused on what our core mission is by prioritizing product development that fits that mission and not being distracted by shiny new objects until that core issue is resolved. Number two, strategic retail partnerships. Jimmy and Jared showed the power of a cold email, but more so, it was fascinating to hear how they secured their partnership with Bunnings. It wasn't just a sales pitch. They went looking for a relationship and not only got a distribution deal, they got a relationship with content and a marketplace integration as well. It's a really good reminder to search for partnerships, not just sales deals. And number three, product validation and customer feedback. Jared and Jimmy emphasize the importance of validating a product idea through customer feedback. And they've done this since Day Dot. Their experience with clipboarding surveys and a successful Kickstarter campaign highlights how essential it is to make sure there's a market for your product before scaling. But more than that, once you are off the ground, despite how much is on your roadmap and there will get a lot on your roadmap very quickly. Never shut down customer feedback and ideas. Jared and Jimmy kept bringing the ideas in, but just had to be more and more disciplined around knowing what they could execute on. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. What a fun one. I learned so much about plants today. Make sure you check out Plant with Willows products on their website www.plantwithwillow.com or go call into Bunnings. Have a look around, pick up some Willow if you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or a colleague. You could leave us a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts and please please support our sponsors, Shopify and Deliver in Person who make this podcast possible. Before you go, we'd love to invite you to join our free e commerce learning platform Add to Cart Campus, Meet other professionals and learn from e commerce experts to take your business and your e commerce career to the next level. Register to join campus@addtocart.com now. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague. Or even better, leave us a review on Spotify or Apple. It really makes a difference.
