The Sill was one of those companies. Founded in 2012 by Eliza Blank, it sold houseplants online and out of small retail stores, contributing to millennials’ houseplant obsession. Its plants came in recognizable, chic pots, a marker of style and taste.
But during the pandemic, millennials’ entry into a new phase of life accelerated. Like many of her peers, Blank left a major city (in her case, it was from New York to the Catskills). With those moves came a big opportunity for the Sill: houses with yards. About a year ago, the eight-figures-in-revenue brand started the transition to become an outdoors and gardening business, going from a billion-dollar houseplant market (rounded up, as Blank recalls telling investors) to an $11 billion consumer outdoors market. The brand closed its 12 retail stores and is focusing exclusively on ecommerce, where only 10% of sales in the category happen today.
“I was 26 when I founded the company, and I’m not 26 anymore,” Blank says. “It’s a direct reflection of how I’ve grown up.” To make the transition, Blank is stepping down as CEO and bringing on a new chief executive: Adam Smith, the former CEO of the ecommerce plants business Fast Growing Trees.
The pivot takes Blank back to her original vision for the Sill—but now her customers are ready for it. Half of the brand’s customers are between 25 and 44, and 58% live in a house. “My ambition for this business was always to be a full solution, and then I got caught up in the houseplant because it became this millennial obsession,” Blank says. She explains what attracted so many millennials to houseplants: “You could be into self-care. You could be into health and wellness. You could be into home decor. Or you could be a purist—you could actually just be into plants.”
Some of those same benefits are driving millennials’ interest in gardening. “You can’t be holding your iPhone while you’re watering plants,” Blank says. But even more than with indoor plants, millennials need guidance. Gardening is the most popular hobby in the U.S., Smith says—but older generations’ knowledge hasn’t been passed down to millennials, the oldest of whom are now 44.
Compared to traditional garden centers and giants like Home Depot, the Sill is positioning itself as a place new gardeners can buy plants, but also learn what to do with them. “We have this group of people who are coming into the core gardening time of their lives, and they don’t know what to do,” Smith says. “So we are starting from the very basics of: How do you dig a hole?”
Besides education on its website and on social media, that also includes merchandising the massive assortment of plants available for purchase. For older customers, their top purchases are usually privacy trees. Sill customers are typically in smaller first homes, buying plants for patios. Its top sellers are olive trees—a popular gift—and a Meyer lemon tree, which customers will buy for fun even in colder climates, where it may only produce five lemons a year.
Eliza Blank founded the houseplant brand the Sill in 2012. Courtesy of The Sill
Houseplants still make up most of the Sill’s business, but Smith expects the breakdown between indoor and outdoor to reach 50/50 by next year. Its pivot addresses some core challenges with the live plants industry—namely, that shipping costs are so high no matter the value of a customer’s order. Adding bigger-ticket outdoor items ups the average order value, defraying some of those costs. It also increases sales during the spring and summer; houseplant sales peak during the holiday season.
Blank and Smith say they’re not interested in returning to physical retail—and Blank isn’t interested in going back to startup-style venture capital. She says the brand is “done” raising institutional capital. And she hasn’t seen many of her 2010s peers survive millennials’ evolution, either.
“Most brands, they’re comfortable with what they know, so they’ll just continue to act the same even as their customers age—or they’ll try and acquire the younger version of the customer,” she says.
Today, millennials want more than vibey houseplants. “How do you keep yourself grounded when everything else around you is changing so rapidly?” Blank says. “Gardening just reminds us that there is a payoff to being patient, and you can’t have everything give you instant gratification.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Sara Braun. Subscribe here.
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“I’ve looked at some of the bad things as little gifts. That propelled me. That made me discover strength that I didn’t know I had, or made me stand up and say, ‘I’ll prove you wrong, and I’ll do this.’ It moved me forward.”
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