Austin's Local Plant Source wants to disrupt this 'tech phobic' industry

by Kelly O'Halloran
September 19, 2016

Startups regularly break into antiquated marketplaces, hoping to modernize and improve the experience for its users. 

In 2011, Zac Tolbert launched Local Plant Source (LPS) to disrupt an industry that he describes as  "tech phobic" — plants. With the introduction of the company's technology platform, the commercial landscape industry has started to change through more efficient practices between buyers and suppliers.

“That’s been our M.O. the last few years: how do we move this industry forward, but make them think they are doing the same thing,” said Tolbert, a landscape architect. “We make the change as little as possible and gradual so we can ease them into the 21st century.”

LPS's model provides a dependable, smoother process for landscape architects and contractors to order plants for design projects. This gives them faster insights to what is available immediately, as opposed to sourcing the market by phone. This eliminates the risk of putting in an order and finding out that the grower does not have what has been requested — a situation Tolbert experienced firsthand.

Five years ago, Tolbert was designing a landscape for a high-profile hotel expansion downtown. After receiving the approval on his design concept and a contractor bid, all the details of the project appeared to be on track. However, in the week leading up to the hotel's grand opening, Tolbert and his team learned that the design's signature plants weren't available, jeopardizing the entire project. 

LPS provides tools for contractors and landscape architects so that they can avoid such snafus, while also providing data on most common requests to help the growers harvest accordingly. Now, the buyers can see what plants are available for their projects and make adjustments as needed with real-time updates. 

The company has also incorporated a service side to their platform, adding account managers to ensure transparent communication between the suppliers and buyers while handling the purchasing and logistics of the order.

According to Tolbert, this has made quite an impression on the growers. The LPS system helps to eliminate the poor buyer behaviors that have developed over the last 30-40 years, such as putting in an order last minute that the growers can't honor. 

“The growers love us,” Tolbert said. “We have pushed the buyers in a direction that the growers want.”

Looking into this year, the LPS team of seven plans on developing additional solutions based on supplier data they’ve accumulated and will be adding over the next couple of months. The data will unveil how many growers exist in the U.S. currently, which Tolbert believes to be significantly less than what current market research reflects due to survey results released over four year periods.

"We want to turn that data into a new product and service for landscape architects, allowing them for the very first time in their careers to make intelligent design decisions, knowing exactly what the supply chain looks like and avoiding any potential problems long before they have them," said Tolbert, who plans on launching a beta signup product next month.

More data means more engineers. The company hopes to expand their team with additions of data science engineers and raise a Series A round of funding this spring. 

 

Image provided by Local Plant Source

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