Phil:
We're delighted to welcome onto the underground today, Jamie Gray from So Easy. Jamie, welcome to the show.

Jamie:
Hi Kate, Hi Phil

Kate:
Hi, Jamie.

Phil:
Jamie, why don't we, jump right back to the beginning of your story? So, you’re part of a second generation business that's evolved a lot since, its formation in 1988. Can you tell us what the backstory is that's led to seed sticks, becoming its own gifting brand?

Jamie:
Yeah, sure. Like you say my dad, started the business in 1988. He worked for Wilkinson Sword, the Razor blade company, they were making, swords, and razor blades for, you know, for fighting against Gillette. And they merged with, a match company called British Match, creating Wilkinson Match. So making matches, swords and razor blades and…

Kate:
Sorry, Jamie, can I just interrupt, when you say swords? I thought you were taking the Mickey. Wilkinson Sword did start as swords, not tools?

Jamie:
Yeah, we've got some, pretty ornate… Well, they're not actually out anymore, but I remember growing up having, like, Prince Charles's sword that he had when he married to Princess Diana. On our wall. They're great for fighting, which we often did - me and my sister. Bizarrely, I remember them. I had one, I had one like the one He-Man had, I don’t know if you watched He-Man. So a basic big sword. My sister had the kind of ornate Prince Charles one.

Kate:
Goodness me. How did I not know that?

Jamie:
I know, yeah, not many people do know that. I mean, that's the story of of seed sticks, but yeah. So dad was working there until the late 80s. He got made redundant when, the big corporation tried to get everyone in line. And dad, for some reason, took this side business that they were, they were working on called Seed Sticks, which was a product. It's a bit like a book of matches, but with a seed on the end. And he started in 1988. With a patent and, and the machinery to produce it. And I guess that's the story of this thirty seven years ago.

Kate:
That's a massive kind of jump though, isn't it. From matches, swords to seeds that that's quite a big jump, isn't it? Was your father into gardening at all, is there more of a brand story here?

Jamie:
I guess the story, he was in a, you know, the typical corporate, man with his, sort of, what my mum call it bottle green suit, moustache and smoking Romeo and Juliets with his, his alcohol cabinet in the side in the corner of the office. So he was, you know, he was flying around, flying around the world, opening factories, making deals.
I guess a procurement role before became procurement. And, you know, matches were probably the biggest promotional product, branded merchandise item in the world. If you think about the number of smokers there were. And on his on every plane, every restaurant, every hotel. And so yeah, I guess that's the kind of, serendipitous moment of starting seed sticks with a product that was, steeped in, you know, promotional marketing almost, so I guess it was it was an R&D hustle. It was a it was a side project that Wilkinson Match had, they had their main focus was razor blades and swords and matches and Seed Sticks was born out of an R&D idea.

Kate:
Goodness me. So I'm just going to ask a simple question for anyone… we're bandying around the word seed stick. But what is a seed stick?

Jamie:
Well, it's fundamentally it's like a book of matches, but with seed on the striking end. So you, you have a branded cover, we have a cover that protects the seed or would protect the striking end. Then you open it up and you've got typically 5 or 10 sticks in there. And just like with a book of matches, you tear one off. But instead of, you know, turning over to strike, you would plant it into soil up to a guide line where you plant it down into and you'd water it and then the seed would germinate. And it's a real visual aid of sowing a seed. It’s quite an easy and fun way. And we coined the “tear it, plant it, grow it” phrase. I guess the beauty of it is the tab. So underneath the the line where the where you have to push the product in and to look how far you go in, there's a tab mechanism where the seed sits with, non-toxic glue and that creates almost like a greenhouse effect.
So when the seed goes into the soil, it creates a warm, almost like an air bubble. For the seeds to germinate.

Phil:
Fascinating.

Kate:
Yeah, I'm looking at one now because Jamie kindly, a little while ago, sent me some seed sticks and… I mean, I will say that they are really attractive, really pretty gifts and a lovely way of, of getting people to sow.

Jamie:
Thanks Kate. I don't know if you’ve sowed them yet or if they’re still sat on your desk?

Kate:
I've got my, my carrots are just starting to come through.

Jamie:
Oh brilliant.

Kate:
I have been a bit late. I do a bit of everything. And I did give a couple out to some other people who are growing some herbs for me. So again, you know, it's been one of the best early sowing seasons that I've known for a long time this year. So as long as people remember to water. But as you said they're really easy to use, really simple and just so attractive. In fact, they're almost too attractive to rip open, you know, and do stuff with. You kind of want to hang on to them as well. I, I love the idea. Anything that gets people growing always has my vote anyway. I love the concept and I love how pretty they are. But Phil, you're more marketing side than me. But as a gardener, they are fantastic. Just one thing I would say is, what's the shelf life of the seeds, you talk about using the biodegradable glue, or the eco friendly glue that doesn't cause any problems? Does that help the shelf life of them?

Jamie:
I mean, I found a strawberry seed stick, sorry, tomato seed stick in my drawer that must have been five years old. And I planted the seeds, and they germinated.

Kate:
Yeah, I think they are almost better protected than in a seed packet because you kind of keep them, then keep them closed all the time. And I just. I think they're lovely. It's a gift that I would really like, like to have and actually some underground podcast seed sticks…

Phil:
Branding, yeah

Jamie:
It's difficult for us to, to narrow down, I I would say that you would certainly be in that stratosphere. But also I don't know why there has to be a target market, because my little boy Louis, for example, that that generation will probably grow up not knowing how to sow a seed at all, I imagine. And so when we go outside and we… I've got lots of seed sticks left over, as you'd imagine, when we go outside and we have a play in the garden, he takes great joy with tearing that stick, planting it. Not only that, but he can see tomorrow, the next day where he has planted it. It's a fun way, if I gave him a bunch of seeds, just in his hand, it just, you know, drops it, eats them.
So dexterity is quite important, I think. Like, this is a good tool for, people that, you know, the elderly or the young with dexterity issues. But also, I'd like to try and get this product into an enthusiast’s hand. And, you know, they were going to walk into a supermarket. They want some seeds right? They probably don't care how it's delivered. But actually, what if they did care? And what if they could use this product that would visually help them and they know where they were. And it's a bit more fun, you know, so I'm just trying to explore that avenue as well.

Kate:
That's a really good idea. Have you come across Lee Connolly.

Jamie:
Yeah.

Kate:
Yeah. He would be somebody I would definitely try and get in touch with

Jamie:
I’m trying.

Kate:
He’s a massive children's educator. Well, he is a friend of the show, so we'll have to we'll have to word, definitely. But he's amazing really. Because I used to teach children gardening we’d only ever stick to the bigger seeds, you know nasturtiums and things like that are tangible. And I do like what you're saying about, because kids always, once they sow something, they expect it to be growing the next day, the next day. But with this they can still see that it's there and you can get a lot less waste as well. So yeah, that's something I didn't think about.

Jamie:
And this is compostable and yeah, I'm trying to break into the curriculum. I don't know. I've got no idea. I've tried gently. This businesses could be all encompassing for the minute and we’ve got a promotional marketing business which is, which is the bread and butter, but I'm trying to break into….
I've had a couple of calls with Lee. He's doing some great stuff. But, you know, I'd like to try and see how we can get more of these products into the hands of children, it would be brilliant

Phil:
The RHS as well, do quite a lot in that area as well

Kate:
Yes, they do.

Phil:
Can you just run through the different seeds you do with the seed sticks?

Jamie:
Yeah, now you're going to test me. So the catalogues a little bit misleading because it has got a coming soon section. So we're developing at the moment, the greeting cards. So traditional happy birthday. But inside you have a small section that has a seed stick pressed in. So something slightly different and is a play on words… so Thyme to celebrate and Thyme to sow seeds for example.

Phil:
Like a good pun.

Jamie:
Thank you. We’re also developing some grow kits as well. So three of these products: a wooden cube, an aluminium tube and wood fibre pot, all sell really well in promo. Not to say it's going to do well in retail, but I think it will. So we're developing that on the side. So the kind of the live SKUs are the individual units.
So we’ve got, Go Wild and Herb Me Up. So Go Wild is the wild flower traditional as Kate held up it’s ten sticks in a kind of rectangle form. Probably 40mm by so 60, 70. So they're, they're doing really well. Is that a single year or impulse purchase ones with some nice point of sale, they retail around £2.50. And then we've got, the gift packs, which I'll keep relating to, with a sort of Willy Wonka style, vibe. And we’ve got six executions from a chef's kitchen, a kind of kitchen starter pack. So you have lots of herbs to, a wildflower meadows with flowers in there to, it's nursery pun on kids nursery being a growing nursery as well. It's like it's.

Phil:
So you're not just targeting garden centres then this is a gifting product that you could see in all sorts of different types of retail. Is that right?

Jamie:
Yeah. So I'd like to say that way we've started very, so quietly and generally we launched at Glee, I mean, we met Blue Diamond, Alan Roper came onto our stand and hushed my lips, as I was explaining about the product, because he wanted to make sure that he understood the products without me in his ear. And we've, been listed in 20 of his stores. I'd love to get into the other 30, but slowly but surely. And yeah, we took orders on the day, which is completely… it still baffles me. In my other world, that never happens. So yeah, we won that Blue Diamond and we won probably 5 or 6 other independents, which is really good. We've got some conversations ongoing with some other quite large, garden centres, which is really exciting just trying to push them over the line.
And then and then Spring Fair was equally not as fruitful, but in terms of like number of small retailers, independents, they've got, you know, the passion they have, seeing something new and they can see that you're trying to make a difference. It was really rewarding. And yeah, we’re probably in 10 - 15 maybe a bit more independents across the country. So it’s very small at the moment. But yeah looking to continue.

Kate:
So have you got… you've talked about Blue Diamond though. Is there a garden centre or another gift shop or whatever that, that has done? Well that they have told you? And what have they done that's worked, or is there anything you can kind of advise them to do to make it pop out a little bit more.

Jamie:
It's a new world to me. I didn't know how much freedom we would have to recommend, how one should present one's products in, you know, in a store. We've actually taken on a sales rep, in the last couple of weeks who's gone into one store and completely rearranged them. I said that back to the buyer, and he went “it looks great, go ahead and do the other 18 / 19.”

Kate:
Phil and I both have got quite a lot of experience with POS, and working with companies that go in and do their own merchandising, so that's something that I didn't realise you actually, you weren't in charge of, but it can make such a difference, can’t it, you know.

Jamie:
When we were at Glee, I don't know if you can see behind my shoulder. You maybe just be able to. We didn't have any Point Of Sale. So someone came to the stand and said, oh how do we display it. Oh you’ve got to put it on a shelf or lay out on a, you know, a pallet or something, you know, like built up and so we had we… almost used it as a sort of focus group. We went back and then developed a really nice the point of sale for the gift packs, which are the, the kind of the Willy Wonka style. We now got a really nice, I think, point of sale at the same for the bees with the bee shaped seed sticks and the Christmas trees type seed sticks.

Phil:
So how do you decide what new seed sticks you're going to add to that, line?

Jamie:
Yeah. Good question. I think when I first joined the business about sort of ten years ago now, and there wasn't much variety in terms of shapes, I keep going on about the shapes that that really separates us out from seed packets, because we've got the spine to the product. You can do quite a lot to it. Because the Bee's done really well, we've looked at maybe doing a ladybird and maybe doing a butterfly, which might be quite fun.
But that's not a question you asked me. And, you know, how do we come up with… We've got a small team here that's sort of green fingered individuals, about a small team of about ten. My dad is, not in the business anymore, but certainly, turns up and puts a lot of effort in. So he's got lots of ideas. He's still pushing one particular product that maybe one day will come into, into retail for kids. We have a quarterly meeting. We come up with new ideas, but I kind of go back to we’re sat on like it's almost like a library here. We’re sat on Michael Jackson's back catalogue. Well, not quite, the, you know. We've got all these products, a hundred or so that I think could work really well. We've got these – they’re not seed sticks, we’ve got these balls of seeds, a bit like seed balls, but they're we pull them rainbows and they're coloured balls of paper. Tissue paper. We, we upcycle. You know, when you print something off on the printer and you keep it like I have it for your question, keep it for a day, and then it goes in the bin where we shred that, put it in with the tissue paper. We've got someone hand rolling the balls. When we, we had we add the seed and we've got two de-hydrators. And the industry in promo has gone mad for them. And we’ve bought a 3D printer, now to create a die to do - you guessed it shapes. You know, we've got aeroplanes and bees and houses.
So something like that, which I know, people would love. But it's just slowly but surely bringing in more product that we've got in promo into retail.

Phil:
And how do you check when you're coming up with a new product? How do you check that it's going to work? You know, it's actually going to grow?

Jamie:
In terms of growing. We've got a growing trials room. I had a client here earlier. We don't do many of them. And she opened doors and was like: “oh it’s like a meth lab.”
Without meth. And you just see, we've got a UV light and we do lots of tests.
We've now got in-house printing, creasing and cutting, I probably should have mentioned that on the call. So that's really helped our margin, but also made us more nimble. And we can try things out now. And it's not costing us a die or three days, four days lead time so we can try something. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
And it does work great. We can produce it pretty quickly and scale out quite nicely.

Phil:
And are there, I mean, is there a certain design that you've currently selling in retail that's actually, doing really, really well? You know, that's the one that flies off the shelf when you manage to get it into store.

Kate:
And don't say the aeroplane shape.

Jamie:
Hahahahaha. Damn it. It's not actually in retail yet, but yes, it's early days, right? We've only been trading since September, so.

Kate:
Oh right. Oh, I didn't realise it was that early, right?

Jamie:
Yeah. And it would appear that the love for Wild flowers is still as strong as ever. So, Andrew, at Blue Diamond's been, nice enough to share his sales data, and they're the strongest, whether it's the wildflower, gift pack or the or the bee wildflower. They're the ones that or the Go Wild, they're the three strongest sellers.
So, yeah, I guess the wildflowers are sort of. You can wrap it up with whatever execution you like, but it seems to be wildflowers are as popular, as ever. Really.

Kate:
What is it about the seed sticks that that make kind of having a gift that you can plant just that little bit more personal?

Jamie:
This has been a dream, a retail dream for way too long. And I've always put it off and put it off. I got a grant from the council, I think it's £3,000 to spend it on something innovative, design led. And that's what made me do the gift packs. They look very different to how they are now. When I first we first design them, I showed… we did like a mini focus group with friends. And the feedback was it looks like tampons. So yeah, not the quite the vibe I was going after. I don't think it's. But then again, I'm not in the market for that type of product. So it's come a long way. I think in probably in the past 18 months, the team have got behind it and we've really pushed the design and production.
So that's one thing I wanted to say. I think the sticks you know, I’m massively biased, but we’re made in Britain certified, they’re made below me, we’ve got great control on quality, we buy the seeds - as much as we can – locally.
Do I believe in it? Well, I've grown up in this business my entire life. So there's. And it's given me a good life. Like, you know, it's not, my dad isn’t in Barbados, you know, on a super yacht, but it's given me a good life. And there's a lot of that festers, you know, a passion and a love for something that your father and your family, and all borne out of this one product. I think when I started or when I joined the business, a lot of that came out in the way that I'm just genuine and honest. I'm not, I'm a terrible actor and I can't lie. So I think a lot of that came out, and I think since moving out of London and having my own garden, and having my son and trying to spend time with him rather than just going back to the laptop, you know, we water the plants not every day throughout the year because it's rainy and wet and cold, but in the summer, that's our time. You know, last night we were watering the plants, we’ve got some seed sticks growing at the back. So, yeah, I mean, this product is everything, to us as a business, it's it is what makes us unique. Sets us apart from for everyone else. And yeah, I'm attached to it emotionally.
I think, big time.

Kate:
That's coming through.

Phil:
So, what's next for Seed Sticks?

Jamie:
In the near future, finding the time to support the sales agent, as much as I can to try and continue to slowly develop more products and bring them to market. Launch Seed Sticks dot co dot uk. Because the minute it's just a side section on the website. So it’s all hidden and the catalogue is obviously hidden down a down navigation drop down.
Do more shows, find the time to do more shows? More sales to then use as budget to do more shows. Going to Europe would be fun, hopefully I’ve got it in me. And get it in more hands of consumers. Really. So direct to consumer as well I think it's quite exciting. But you've got a lot a lot of drivers from the digital marketing space. Which I guess you’ll know about Phil. So yeah, I think yeah. Try and get as many people tearing it, planting it and growing it as possible really.

Phil:
I think DTC is tricky at a low price point, but that's, you know.

Jamie:
One thing I'd love to do, I'd say looking always looking for, you know, other partners, illustrators, you know, influencers. I've been not really haven't tapped into any of that. Really.

Phil:
So, Jamie, when you look at gifting and gardening trends, what do you think retailers and brands should be paying more attention to? Right now?

Jamie:
Yeah, I don't know whether it's controversial or not, but I guess the younger the vibe for me to the generation below me. So, Z’s I think, you know, so I'm, I'm a millennial, pretty sure. But my, my nephew, my 20 year old nephew who I, I bet has never been to a garden centre, and trying to, you know, create products that would interest him to buy if he was there, that that's the kind of a big gap.
You know, it's become trendy. I maybe I'm, I mean, it's, I think it's become trendy, but I always give an example of my wife is having a bit of a tough time at work and, and my mate bless him Pete, he sent her something is it's sort of to cheer her up. And it was a plant, like a big plant, which we grew and grew and grew, and moved and, unfortunately left in the outhouse and it got frosty and died. But, anyway, I think ten years ago, he would have sent her a bottle of wine, or would have sent her chocolates and now he sent her a houseplant. So I think it's become trendy, certainly for my generation - Trendier. Yeah. I just I think it's it needs to work its way down, you know Bloom & Wild. I think it's made buying flowers more accessible. And they've obviously expanded that. I think they're the biggest online - the biggest florist in Europe now potentially. So yeah. Yeah I'd like to see more… is I guess the future generation. And I guess that's what Lee's trying to trying to change.

Kate:
I mean, your product to me is something that would appeal to a younger, a younger crowd just getting into gardening, especially the herbs. Herbs side of it, you know, because cooking is always trendy. Always popular. And leading on from that, really, if you could send everyone a seed stick today, but it could only be one variety.
What would you send? What seed stick would it be?

Jamie:
Well, I’m going to cheat, I thought about this, I thought we could, given the balmy weather and, the fact that everyone kind of mostly likes a drink. We can send them the cocktail bar and they can have a nice, nice cocktail with maybe rosemary or mint, lemon balm, thyme, basil, lavender, whichever one they wanted to choose in their refreshing cocktail drinks.

Kate:
Or a mocktail, of course.

Jamie:
Or a mocktail, fair play Kate. Well done.

Phil:
what a great answer.

Kate:
I like that a lot.

Jamie:
My wife, she’d be mocktailing.

Phil:
So I think that just about wraps things up. Thanks so much, Jamie, for coming on and telling us more about your story and about seed sticks and, wish you all the best for the future with it.

Kate:
Yeah, it's a super product. It really is. And for me, anything that can encourage people to
garden is always good. And if it looks good, I think that, you know, the battles you halfway there really aren't you. So I love it.

Jamie:
No thank you I wanna say thanks, Phil and thanks Kate. And anyone listening, you know, if you want to get in touch, please do. Is Jamie at sow easy? Soweasy.com and Yeah anything collaboratively we can do give us a shout. But yeah thank you. Thanks for your time and I look forward to seeing you or meeting you soon.