I turned my school job into a £25 million business – here’s how I did it
WHEN Chris Bonnett was a teenager, he was working on a sixth-grade business project to investigate whether a new phenomenon called “the Internet” could be used to sell plants.
25 years later, his mail order website Gardening Express has a turnover of £25m a year and at peak times he employs around 150 staff from his base in Chelmsford.
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It was quite a leap: from rushing home from class to his mother and father’s house and then packing boxes and sending them through the local post office.
Today he is active in markets such as China and Eastern Europe, selling about half a million plants a year.
“When I was in school, everyone had to choose work experience and I decided to go to a garden center,” he told Sun Gardening.
“I grew all kinds of plants at home, like cacti, and I started collecting different fuchsias. I bought a small greenhouse.
“When I was in the garden centre I saw all these customers coming in for the plants and I thought, ‘wait a minute, maybe they’re onto something here’.
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“The internet was just coming up, so I thought, let’s see if we can put a website online or do something online with plants.
“That was the basis for my sixth grade business project.”
He added: “I’ve never really had any regrets since then.
“I set up the website, but eBay started to get big, so I started selling there. .
“I was out of university by then and we were earning about £350,000 a year. I asked my friends to help me pack boxes.
“I bought a plug plants in large quantities and started growing them. That’s how it all started.
“But then my website really started to grow, so I quit eBay to focus on that.”
CHRIS’ TOP TIPS FOR BUYING PLANTS ONLINE
Buying online can feel a bit fraught for the more traditional gardener. Especially if you’re used to popping into your local garden centre to get a feel for the plant before you buy it. So what should you look for when buying online?
Chris gives Sun Gardening some top tips to help you get started.
- “Review the size of the produce or plants you’re buying,” he said. “Our customer base wants something that’s established and that you can put in the garden right away — but if you don’t, you might end up with a small plug plant that takes a long time to get going.
- “Make sure there is some kind of plant guarantee – we have a five-year guarantee on trees, but also a transit guarantee, so if your plant arrives broken, we will replace it. Other companies should offer the same.
- “Don’t just go for the cheapest. Sounds obvious, but the cheapest is not always the best.
- “Look at sustainable packaging. We’ve always used mostly cardboard and if there was plastic in it, it was always recycled and recyclable – but it’s worth checking who you’re buying from is trying to be sustainable.”
- “See if they’re growing anything themselves. We source our plants from all over the world. But we also test plants at our base in Chelmsford. “There’s no point in selling a customer a plant if it’s full of pests and diseases.”
You probably know them: they offer huge discounts and plants for a pound.
And they often sell exotic-looking plants, like flamingo trees, for rock-bottom prices.
“China is probably the furthest country we have to deal with,” he added
“They grow certain products very well. And then we buy from all over Europe, all the way to Eastern Europe.
“They have specialists there who grow different fruit trees, which are really fantastic and very popular.
“All these guys are growing for the whole of Europe, not just the UK, so they can offer better prices which we can then pass on to the customers.
“If someone is growing for a large supermarket chain, and that could be any supermarket chain in this country or in Europe, that grower might be growing 100,000 plants.
I talk to them and tell them to make me another 10,000 and they will make them for the same price.
“What a difference from 25 years ago.
“I went from my father and mother’s garden to building packaging halls covering thousands of square meters.
“And our turnover is about £25 million a year.
“Luckily I took that Business Administration course in sixth grade.”
ALSO IN VERONICA’S COLUMN THIS WEEK
NEWS, TIPS AND A CONTEST TO WIN A COBRA CHAINSAW
NEWS! IT’S BEEN Glee Festival this week at Birmingham NEC, where the great and the good of the horticultural industry come together to show off what’s on offer. Sixteen fantastic new innovations in garden and pet products won this year’s coveted Glee New Product Showcase. Among these was Peter’s Gold – the apple tree we previously featured in Sun Gardening – named after the late gardening legend Peter Seabrook, which won the Plants, Seeds and Bulbs category, along with Catharanthus Soiree Light Pink Dark Eye. Urban Wyrm wormcasts won the Sustainability Award. And Ecofective Snail Stopfrom Sipcam Home and Garden, won the overall Glee New Product Award.
NEWS! Michael Perry, AKA The Plant Geek, shared his top five Future Plants on Glee with Sun Gardening. Look for Agastache Beelicious, Hydrangea Groundbreaker, Begonia Fireworks, Rose Scentifall Lemon and Pennisetum Tiny Tails at your local garden center and online.
NEWS! The Plants Fair Roadshow will take place on Borde Hill GardenHaywards Heath tomorrow (15/09/24) from 10am to 3pm. The collective of specialist nurseries offer a wide range of locally grown, garden worthy and often unusual plants. www.plantfairsroadshow.co.uk/
TO RESCUE! TRIM your topiary and hedges with this handy two-in-one hedge trimmer from Bosch for £56.99 on Amazon, or check out the Draper 3.6V Cordless Hand Grass and Hedge Trimmer Set at Robert Dyas for just £19.99
WIN! TWO lucky winners can take home a Cobra chainsaw worth £119 each. Cobra CS1024V 24v Li-ion cordless chainsaw is a well-balanced, lightweight chainsaw that is ideal for light pruning and cutting work in your garden. To enter, visit www.thesun.co.uk/CobraChain or fill in the form THIS FORM . Or write to Sun Cobra Chainsaw Comp, PO Box 3190, Colchester, Essex, CO2 8GP. Please include your name, age, email address or telephone number. UK residents aged 18 and over only. Ends 23:59 GMT 28.09.24 Terms and conditions apply.
THIS WEEK’S TASK Time to plant the sweet pea seeds in containers in your greenhouse. If you haven’t been pruning your sweet peas regularly, they may have formed seed pods, so hopefully you can use some of them.
TIP OF THIS WEEK! Lidl has some great deals on perennial grasses – and as the ground is still warm, it’s a good time to get them in. I picked up some Miscanthus for £3.99.
