The connected devices craze appears to be spreading to the yard, and Urbana, Ill.,-based startup PlantLink is trying to stake its claim.
PlantLink, which makes a sensor that tells users when their plants need to be watered, is partnering with industry juggernaut Scotts Miracle-Gro on its mission to get millennials and younger generations into gardening.
Scotts released the Gro app to coincide with Earth Day. The app can pair with PlantLink and other Connected Yard devices, like smart sprinklers.
The partnership will provide a wider customer base for PlantLink and the other devices, and display them together at retailers. PlantLink’s new products will be added to those displays in 2017.
This could be PlantLink’s second chance.
The company, which also has a Chicago office, ran a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 to launch its first batch of sensors. The company struggled early, failing to meet shipping deadlines.
One of the biggest issues then was consumers’ lack of knowledge about connected devices, said Mercedes Mane, who took over as CEO of PlantLink’s parent company, Oso Technologies, in 2015. Displaying the sensors with other connected devices could help.
“This is the first step in actually trying to better educate the people on this ecosystem of connected gardens,” Mane said.
PlantLink is also preparing to roll out Lush, its second batch of products, for sale online in June. The new devices — an improved sensor and a solar-powered valve — can automatically water your garden when plants are thirsty.
“One thing we saw very, very fast was that people were using this indoors, but they were using it just as much outdoors,” Mane said. “We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if they would trigger watering automatically?’ ”
The $59 valve can be set to water when necessary or on a schedule, but it can only work on-demand with the $35 sensor.
First-time buyers also need a base station, sold with a sensor for $79.
The Lush products will go on sale on PlantLink’s website and Amazon in June, and will hit retailers’ websites, such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, this year, Mane said.
Home Depot started stocking shelves with the Kickstarter version of PlantLink’s sensor last June. Soon Lowe’s, Target and Best Buy followed. The company had more than $300,000 in sales during the second half of 2015, Mane said.
The company, founded at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ill., has seven full-time employees, plus contractors and part-timers.
As PlantLink looks to scale, it will likely battle the same issues faced by other Internet of Things companies, said Vince Guarna, managing director of Chicago-based IoT Technology Solutions.
Consumers are getting more reluctant to put a lot of apps on their phones — especially ones that need to be connected to a device.
“The same thing is true on the hardware side,” he said, because people don’t want multiple device hubs sitting around their homes.
Scotts opted to work with startups rather than create its own devices because startups can innovate faster than huge corporations, said Bill Litfin, Scotts director of digital and content. In return, he believes Scotts can help the startups establish a customer base.
“We can’t outnimble them, and they can’t outscale us,” he said.
