What Grove Does Differently to Get People Growing

It’s one thing to buy an indoor garden. It’s another thing to grow successfully with it.

Indoor gardening is on the rise. New products for growing food at home hit the market every month. Major brands are starting to enter the space now, too, signalling imminent widespread availability. Soon everyone who wants to grow fresh food at home will start, and Grove couldn’t be more excited to guide you through each step.

That said, this rapidly growing industry also faces a real problem.

Over the past four years, our team at Grove has shipped two high-end indoor growing systems, maintained tight relationships with engaged customers, and closely monitored activity in the space. Through all of this, we’ve learned an important distinction: It’s one thing to buy an indoor gardening system, and it’s another thing to grow successfully with it.

In studies we conducted from 2015–2016, 71% of respondents got excited about growing their own food. The benefits are clear, the activity is fun and the outcome is rewarding. Growing food feels empowering. There’s something primal about eating things you grew. The sensation runs deeper than taste buds; it feeds us to our core. People are excited to start, and at Grove, we believe everyone should.

That said, the buying and selling of indoor gardens isn’t the problem, post-purchase is when excitement wanes. People have to use their newly-purchased system successfully and confidently in order to remain happy, engaged and growing. Customers don’t want to do this on their own; they crave guidance and reassurance.

We learned this by accident, honestly. Grove originally had our own reasons for developing close relationships with the people using our products (for feedback, iterating, improving), but an unexpected result of our effort was a deep understanding of the consumer indoor growing experience.

Turns out, there are countless nuances and moments during the indoor gardening experience when our customers wanted help.

Wondering if seedlings are sprouting successfully.
Seeing a yellowing leaf and wondering what’s going on and what to do to fix it.
Seeing white stuff near their plant stems and wondering what’s going on.
Trying to tell if a plant is ready to eat, or to wait a few more days.
Forgetting to order seeds in time, and sitting with an empty garden for too long.

The list goes on. Each moment with a living garden is an opportunity for people get overwhelmed, get frustrated, feel like they don’t know what to do, lose interest, or experience a whole myriad of other emotions.

Grove identified this issue early in customer interactions and quickly set out to design the solution.

Traditional support mechanisms (phone, chat, help docs, etc.) aren’t sufficient for training the mass market how to become successful indoor growers. Users don’t want to call or message companies each time they have a small question or worry, and a lot of what growers express is rooted in a need for reassurance and emotional support, not a need for more facts. Plus, there are too many variables that affect each individual’s experience for reactive support to be effective. Proactive support, training and guidance is vital. This is where we see other companies in our category struggle, and we see customers across the board simply give up on growing within a few growth cycles.

Getting people to grow successfully on their own, with confidence, is the goal.

The Grove Experience does just that. It’s designed to give people confidence to grow an abundance of the food they love, all year long. After four years of selling hardware, the experience we’ve designed is now our big focus. The Grove way works.

How does it all come together?

Every part of the experience comes together in the Grove App and Grove Box.

The Grove App provides personalized growing assistance to ensure regular harvests and faster plant growth. Notifications, tutorials, and tracking are all seamlessly and proactively built into the experience, giving growers confidence on Day One and inspiration on Day One Hundred.

The Grove Box is a routine delivery of all the supplies each grower needs to grow smoothly. In some cases, growers will note their preferences and requests in the app, and custommade Grove Boxes are delivered the moment their garden needs them.

Today, we partner with major appliance, furniture, and product companies to pair The Grove Experience to their indoor gardening products. Soon you will be able to buy one of our partners’ growing systems, bring it home, and then use the Grove platform to grow successfully and confidently with it.

If you’d liked to be one of the first to know when partner products launch, subscribe to our email list!

Let’s grow together.