The Student sat down with Freddie Blackett, an Edinburgh grad and founder of Patch Plants, to talk about how to come up with a killer business idea, the madness of running a startup, and most importantly, the insider knowledge on how to keep your houseplants alive.
Freddie studied Spanish and Portuguese at Edinburgh and explained that ‘I never thought I would be an entrepreneur but I like solving problems.’ He worked in brand consultancy after university, following in his father’s footsteps, who was responsible for such ingenious brand names as Hobnobs and Viagra. He explained that he ‘just stumbled onto the idea for Patch. I think the idea of house pride becomes a thing when you’re 25 or 26. I moved in with Clemmie (now his wife) and I just thought how can I put my stamp on what was ‘her space’?’
‘I stumbled onto the problem that it was very hard for people who are new to plants to get into them. Garden centres are not really accessible geographically or conceptually to young people, they’re quite fuddy-duddy and exclusionary.
‘Starting a business is very messy. I raised some investment and hired an intern, appropriately named Fleur. After 12 months we were a team of about 6. It was a complete mess. It looked smart from the outside but we had problems left, right and centre. A driver we hired ended up stealing one of our vans and running off to eastern Europe with it, and poor Fleur crashed one of the vans. It was great fun though because you’re right at the beginning of the journey, it’s exhausting but it’s also completely all-consuming. When you start to get great feedback from people it just lights you up and gives you energy to go and do it again for more people.
When asked what advice he had for people starting businesses, he said ‘I think it is almost always a recipe for disaster when people come up with an idea and then just run with it. Really, you’re not starting a business, you’re solving a problem; understanding what the problem is and then testing ways to solve it. The first 5 or 6 iterations of our proposition were unsuccessful and then we reached something in the end that could be scaled.
Freddie also gave us his insights into why houseplants are taking over our living spaces: ‘The world is increasingly urbanised, there’s been this massive demographic shift over the last 120 years or so. We are still fundamentally natural beings, we perform best when we are around nature, but a symptom of our urban lives is that we spend most of our time indoors.
‘People are trying to step away from their digital lives and care for something. There’s some evidence to suggest people are deferring the major chapters in their lives like having kids and settling down and that’s why more people have pets and houseplants.’
So, how do we avoid the trauma of killing our plant children? Freddie says there are two common mistakes: ‘Number one, you can bring a plant back from what might be considered the dead if you underwater it, but if you overwater it it’s almost impossible. Do the finger dip test: pop your finger up to the first knuckle into the soil. If it’s dry, then water it. If it’s moist but still looking unhealthy, check if there’s too much water in the bottom, you might need to drain it.
‘Number two, if you’re on a budget, people go for cheap plants, which are usually smaller. But plants are like humans; babies require infinitely more attention than adults. The older and bigger it is, the more forgiving it will be of a little neglect.’
Freddie’s company, Patch Plants, delivers houseplants to anywhere in the UK except the Channel Islands, and they recently announced they are launching an outdoor plant range. You can explore what they have on offer here: https://www.patchplants.com/gb/en/
Image: Patch Plants