I turned my school side hustle into a £25m a year empire…we went from packing boxes in mum’s garden to 150 staff
WHEN Chris Bonnett was a teenager, his sixth form business studies project was to see if a new phenomenon called ‘the internet’ could be used to sell plants.
Fast forward 25 years and his mail order website Gardening Express, is turning over £25m a year, with up to 150 staff at peak times from his base in Chelmsford.
Quite a leap from dashing home from lectures to pack boxes in his mum and dad’s house and sending them via his local post office.
Now he deals with markets as far afield as China and Eastern Europe, and is selling around half a million plants a year.
“When I was at school everyone had to choose work experience and I decided to go to a garden centre,” he told Sun Gardening.
“I’d been growing different things at home like cacti and I started collecting different fuchsias, I got a little greenhouse.
“Then while I was at the garden centre, I saw all these customers coming in for the plants and I thought ‘hang on they might be on to something here’.
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“The internet was sort of just coming in, so I thought oh let’s see if we can chuck a website up or do something online with plants.
“That was what formed my sixth form business studies project.”
He added: “I’ve never looked back since then really.
“I set up the website, but eBay started getting big – so I started selling on there. .
“I had left uni at that point and we were turning over about £350,000 a year. I’d get my friends to help me packing boxes.
“I was buying plug plants in bulk and started growing them and that’s how it sort of started.
“But then my website really started taking off, so I stopped eBay to concentrate 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 have a good feel of the plant before purchasing. So what should you be looking for when you’re buying online?
Chris gave Sun Gardening some top tips to help you on your way.
- “Double check the size of the products or plants that you’re buying,” he said. “Our customer base wants something well established you can put straight out in the garden – but if you don’t check, you might end up with some tiny plug plant which will take a long time to get going.
- “Make sure there’s some sort of plant guarantee – we have a five year guarantee for trees, but also a transit one, so if your plant arrives smashed up we’ll replace it. Other companies should be offering the same.
- “Don’t just go for the cheapest. Sounds obvious, but cheapest isn’t always the best.
- “Look for sustainable packaging. We’ve always used mainly cardboard and if there has been plastic it’s always been recycled and recyclable – but it’s worth checking that whoever you’re buying from is trying to be sustainable.”
- “Check to see if they’re growing anything themselves. We do get our plants from all sorts of places all over the world. But we’re also trialling plants at our base in Chelmsford. “There’s no point in me selling a customer a plant if it’s going to be riddled with pests and disease.”
You’ve probably seen the adverts – offering eye watering discounts and plants for a pound.
And often selling exotic looking plants like Flamingo Trees, at rock bottom prices.
“China’s probably the furthest country we’re dealing with,” he added
“They grow certain products very well. And then we buy from all over Europe, right to Eastern Europe.
“They have specialists there growing different fruit trees, which are absolutely 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 somebody’s growing for a large supermarket group, which could be any of them in this country or in Europe, that grower is going to maybe grow 100,000 plants.
I’ll have a conversation with them and say make another 10,000 for me, and they’ll do them at the same price.
“Quite a change from 25 years ago.
“I’ve gone from my mum and dad’s garden to building packing barns which cover thousands of square feet.
“And our turnover is around £25m a year.
“Thank goodness for that Sixth Form Business Studies course.”
ALSO IN VERONICA'S COLUMN THIS WEEK
NEWS, TIPS AND A COMPETITION TO WIN A COBRA CHAINSAW
NEWS! IT’S been Glee festival at Birmingham NEC this week, where the great and the good of the horticulture trade come together to show what’s on offer. Sixteen fantastic new garden and pet product innovations won this year’s highly-coveted Glee New Product Showcase. These included Peter’s Gold – the apple tree that we previously featured in Sun Gardening – named after the late gardening legend Peter Seabrook, which won the Plant, Seeds and Bulbs category along with Catharanthus Soiree Light Pink Dark Eye. Urban Wyrm wormcasts won the Sustainability award. And Ecofective Slug Stoppa, from Sipcam Home and Garden, won the overall Glee New Product award.
NEWS! Michael Perry, AKA The Plant Geek, has shared his top five Future Plants at Glee with Sun Gardening. Look out for Agastache Beelicious, Hydrangea Groundbreaker, Begonia Fireworks, Rose Scentifall Lemon and Pennisetum Tiny Tails in your local gardencentre and online.
NEWS! The Plants Fair Roadshow will be at Borde Hill Garden, Haywards 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/
SAVE! TRIM your topiary and hedges with this hand held two-in-one Hedge Trimmer from Bosch for £56.99 on Amazon, or check out the Draper 3.6V Cordless Hand Grass & Hedge Shear Kit at Robert Dyas for just £19.99
WIN! TWO lucky winners can take home a Cobra chainsaw worth £119 each. The Cobra CS1024V 24v Li-ion cordless chainsaw is a well balanced, light-weight chainsaw ideal for light pruning and cutting jobs around your garden. To enter, visit www.thesun.co.uk/CobraChain or fill in THIS FORM . Or write to Sun Cobra Chainsaw Comp, PO Box 3190, Colchester, Essex, CO2 8GP. Include your name, age, email or phone. UK residents 18+ only. Ends 23.59GMT 28.09.24 T&Cs apply.
THIS WEEK’S JOB TIme to plant sweetpea seeds in your greenhouse in trays. If you didn’t cut back your sweetpeas regularly they may have formed seed pods so hopefully you can use some of them.
THIS WEEK’S TIP! Lidl has some great deals on Perennial grasses – and because the soil is still warm, it’s a good time to get them in the ground. I got some Miscanthus for £3.99.