The Sill raises $5 million as millennials buy plants

“It’s gardening for my
generation,” Eliza Blank told Business
Insider.
Courtesy of The
Sill

• Millennials
  are buying more plants than ever. Many
  are
   waiting longer to buy homes and are
  living in smaller, urban spaces for longer, which drives an
  interest in raising plants. 
• The Sill, a direct-to-consumer plant seller, has made
  shopping for plants tech-friendly, advising customers on which
  types would be most suitable for their living
  circumstances and delivering plants directly to their
  door. 
• The company just closed a $5 million round of
  funding led by Raine Ventures, bringing its total raised to
  $7.5 million.

Eliza Blank is in the business of selling plants to
novices. 

The Sill, the direct-to-consumer plant-selling business she
founded in 2012 and leads as CEO, simplifies the process of
selecting and buying indoor plants by advising customers on which
types would be most suitable for their living circumstances —
whether their home has bright light, low light, or is
pet-friendly, for example — and then delivering them directly to
their door. 

The plants cost between $6 for a philodendron and go up to $60
for a pilea peperomioides. 

“It’s gardening for my generation,” Blank told Business Insider
in a recent interview. 

“We are trying to reinvent what it means to be a
plant person in 2018 under the age of 40.” 

The message seems to be resonating. The Sill just closed
a
 $5 million round of funding led by Raine
Ventures, bringing its total raised to $7.5 million. It has sold
nearly 100,000 products so far this year and is on track to pull
in nearly $5 million in annual revenue this year, the company
said. It hit $1.7 million in revenue in 2017. 

The company has matured during a boom in indoor plant sales
that analysts say is driven by millennials’ living
circumstances. 
Many millennials are waiting
longer to buy homes and are living in smaller, urban spaces for
longer. For many, that creates a need for some green to bring the
outside in.

In America, millennials are thought to account for
one-third of the houseplant sales, according to Ian Baldwin,
a business adviser for the gardening industry who spoke
with The
New York Times. 

The biggest driver of the trend
seems to be space — or, perhaps, the lack thereof. Blank,
33, came up with the business idea after experiencing her own
frustrations while moving into her first apartment. 

“Like most apartments in New
York, it was dismal at best. I was living in a 200-square-feet
space in a six-floor walk-up, and my window quite literally faced
a brick wall,” she said.

Blank used plants as an
escape. 

“It occurred to me how deeply my
emotional health and well-being was tired to nature,” she
said. 

Bringing the outside in 

The Sill, which operates online and from two stores in New York
City, is perfectly poised to serve the urban, millennial customer
who lives on the top floor of a 10-story building and has no
access to a garden. 

There is also a sense of escapism in plant-keeping. 

“It’s really an opportunity to disconnect with all the craziness
in day-to-day, which is why it has resonated most deeply with
millennials,” Blank said. 

Some have said that the act of looking after plants may also be
filling a void for millennials who are not only buying houses
later, but also delaying getting married and having
children. 

“Plants make us feel like grown-ups. When the traditional
signs of adulthood — marriage, homeownership, children — are
delayed or otherwise out of reach, it’s comforting to come home
to something that depends on you,” Jazmine Hughes wrote in

The New York Times in June 2017.

The Sill plays on this in its reference to its customers as
“Plant Parents.” On its website, it invites customers to join the
so-called “Plant Parent Club” for $35 a month and have access to
workshops and online webinars that instruct owners on how to care
for their new crop. 

Inspirational and aspirational platforms like Instagram and
Pinterest are also creating an “intent to purchase,” Blank said.
The Sill has more than 282,000 followers on Instagram. 

“I don’t know if I would have ever been so involved or thoughtful
about interior design if it wasn’t for companies
on Instagram posting so much content all the time,” she said.

The Sill is now looking to expand its reach into outdoor plants
and target new customers. 

“We got our foothold with millennials, but I see us as starting
to break into not only the 35-plus crowd, but also the next
generation,” she said. 

And she has high hopes for this. 

“This is not a flash-in-the-pan-type trend — it is not something
that is going to go away.”