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Serial entrepreneurs: Michael Bissonette
from:How he created a fast-growing company involving growing plants without soil.
In 2002 a company named AeroGrow was created by Michael Bissonette from Boulder, Colorado, with the aim of marketing and selling an inventive idea involving growing plants without soil. In fact, this idea is still so new that a new category for kitchen appliances had to be made up. This new category is now referred to as kitchen crop appliances. This is a prime example of innovative approach, one of the many talents entrepreneurs need to possess.
It concerns a device which lets people grow plants quickly inside their homes without using soil. Up to recently, only scientists and criminals were interested in this type of device but Michael Bissonette came up with the idea of making this kind of appliance available to a much larger public. Driven by this new idea, he hopes to create a whole new market generating billions of dollars in new revenue. He seems to be well on his way to succeeding.
No garden, yet fresh herbs?
Science fiction fans already know all about aeroponic gardens, another idea borrowed right out of "Star Trek" and featured in many other more recent Sci-Fi movies. Michael Bissonette, the serial entrepreneur, has recently sold a wireless home-security company and another involved in voice-recognition based remote-control, which leads us to suspect that this driven personality must be a science fiction aficionado.
It would not be surprising to see him set up a company wanting to organize the first teletransportation devices or, maybe something simpler and less ambitious, but which would be in line with the products he put on the market so far.
Aeroponics was at first developed by NASA on the imperative of making space craft as light as possible. You guessed right, we're in space again! Making plants grow in space without soil would be a great advantage indeed, so NASA's researchers pursued this idea and discovered that plants would grow even faster than in soil if one sprayed nutrients directly onto the roots of the plants, which are left dangling in the air, hence the name, Aeroponics.
There is, of course, a whole community of people who already use similar devices to grow a usually illegal crop which involves a plant that contains a mind altering substance. But the contraptions these farmers use are crude and expensive compared to Mr. Bisonnette's new appliance and they are not adapted to grow tomatoes, strawberries or other legal herbs. And with this idea in mind, Mr. Bissonette has tapped into a potentially huge market, namely housewives who continuously need fresh herbs in their kitchen, whether they have a garden or not.
After surmounting rather unexpected problems that lengthened the development phase by two years, six more months were devoted to creating a nifty design. By then, hurdles had been overcome seeking out economic lighting, finding kitchen friendly plants and compensating for differences in the chemical composition of tap water. Also, the nutrients had to be delivered effectively.
Harvey McKay, another entrepreneur who made it from scratch in the paper industry, wrote in "Swim With The Sharks" that if you want to make money from growing fish in a pond, it would be wise to put a fence around it for the high probability of finding no fish at all by the time it was harvesting time. Many a small innovator firm with a bright new idea got crushed by one of the bigger established brands out there who simply copied the concept and put their own name on the end result.
That's why Michael Bissonette did the exact opposite. He took an idea from a big brand, in this case the "razor and blade" marketing technique, which is so brutally effectively used by Gillette, that Jay Leno joked about the prices, which are absurdly high, on his nation wide television show. The AeroGrow kitchen crop appliance, which is sold from more than 4000 outlets, is relatively cheap to acquire (the razor); but AeroGrow makes most of its money from selling the seeds (the blade), which are customised (the fence around the pond) in specially designed capsules that only work with AeroGrow appliances.
It seems that these days, entrepreneurs also need to understand they shouldn't be squeamish about copying from successful brands right from the start. To launch the product in 2006, AeroGrow made extensive use of infomercials, showing the public at large that their herbs grew twice as fast in their gardens than in traditional soil.
Another entrepreneur technique was used by AeroGrow when the company made appliances adapted to all budgets and tastes. Their gardens are available today from 29$ plastic versions to $340 metal design ones. Tackling markets outside the US was also on the agenda and today, AeroGrow has market presence in Britain, Australia and even South Korea.
The latest twist to boost sales was the coming online of a site that explains how to tweak the AeroGrow indoor garden to allow for the growth of a plant containing mind altering substances, which goes a long way to explaining why sales reached new highs lately.
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