S22 Ep7: Ned Trier, Founder of The Gluttonous Gardener & Growbar: Growing a business with heart

32:34Friends, not contacts. Friends, not suppliers. Yeah, very, very important. And I think I do always try and buy from small companies. I always try and buy from a company where I know the name of the owner. It makes one feel good about being in business. And I think you want to know where the products are coming from. You want to know who their staff are. You want to know about sustainability. You want to know who you can talk to when they don't arrive on time. You know, it's just for us always been the way forward to know our suppliers. And once you find a good one, stick with them. Unless there's a very good reason not to, then they will stick with you.

33:29As you say, during COVID when we had great problems getting enough boxes, when we had delivery issues, you know, the trusted suppliers would just keep supplying. Absolutely. And I remember the days where, not on the high street, where we had cash issues. And, you know, having those people that you'd work with for a long, long time, being able to say, listen, I can't pay that invoice, but I'm good for it. And that person saying, when you can, I know you will be. And that is such a beautiful thing that we can have as we evolve our companies. I was talking to someone about the generation game. That's the thing, isn't it, where you had to remember everything.

34:17But I don't know if there was a program, and I'm making up, but where you just combine things. So I love the idea, or maybe I know what it is. people would trick me at work and say, I'm going to give you two things, Holly, create a business out of it. And I always thought of the generation game and it could be like a quiz show. Obviously, no one would be watching it because it's very, very niche. But in my brain, I'm like, I love this game. But I love how you took your plants right from the beginning and you're tying on food onto the branches, which is not necessarily obvious, but that combination, that clash of two worlds.

34:56So for you, you have this sort of, you love eating, you love food, you love your plants. And this combination created something very, very unique for you. And again, I think it's a great example of thinking outside the crate is that, you know, olive enthusiast kit. So containing a bottle of extra virgin olive oil along with an olive tree. That again, hadn't been done, isn't done. That's one of your USPs. Where did that come from? I think it came from my head, I'm afraid. Like a lot of these ideas. I mean, the sort of overall premise was that we found that we were developing more or more gift products and they were very much gifts.

35:41So it was not much self-purchase. and so the conventional growing gift is either a house plant or some flowers that somebody might buy from a garden center and give you and if they were the flowers they will be dead in a few weeks if they're a house plant they'll be dead in a few months and that's the end of the present but equally you could give somebody some chocolates or a bottle of wine and that could be gone in the night. So sort of the idea was to combine them and give something that would give instant gratification, i.e. a bottle of wine that can be instantly enjoyed, then a grapevine that can be planted in the garden.

36:24And hopefully, if instructions are followed and all goes well, you will be able to pick your own grates and who knows, even make your own wine in the future. And that is a present that keeps growing and keeps giving. And certainly when we've supplied them, for example, for corporate gifts, they've worked so much better than the fast and expensive sort of hamper or something that's instantly enjoyed and moved on. But this wretched plant, it's in the garden, it carries on giving. And if you have a label and it reminds you of the company that it was given by, it's there. We've had in the past some sort of hardened buyers from companies saying, oh, yes, I was given this plant six years ago by so-and-so.

37:12I mean, I need to know how to prune it now. Now, that's doing a promotional job, isn't it? I mean, how brilliant is that? Yeah, OK. So you've got those two, again, maybe thinking of the customer and just thinking of the end user. Okay, so it wasn't necessarily two industries combining, but it was two moments of time. I always just love, I love looking at things and looking at opportunities because really anyone thinking of doing something out there, taking and listening to what you're saying, I'm wondering if light bulbs are going off because it is a really wonderful way of looking. And when I mentioned the olive crepe that you have, I read when researching you that you purchased a home in Croatia, Am I right in saying this with your brother and a few friends?

38:01Yes. You have an olive grove. I don't know if you still have it that you visited and you harvest your own olive oil from it. Yes. I mean, I think that's probably over slightly... Enthusiastic journalist. Slightly enthusiastic journalist. But yes, a group of us bought a property some years ago when it was probably a slightly riskier thing to do. Again, this was over 20 years ago. And it has a number of olive trees. And we do try, all of us try and go over for a shared harvest. And in good years, we have produced some olive oil. Of course, nowadays, we can't get it back. So when we're there for the odd summer holiday, we have to more or less bathe in it to make use of our very small harvest of olive oil.

38:58But yes, there is this sort of circularity of growing a plant and harvesting it and using it. And I think I would do it if it were in my garden, in a garden on a holiday home. Wherever there's the opportunity to grow something, I would not want to waste the fruits. and there's nothing worse than seeing a lot of apples in London falling to the ground or there's a fantastic mulberry on Cheney Walk I go past sometimes and see the fruit splattering on the pavement and occasionally climb up in amongst the branches or a fig growing in a garden in Battersea and there's actually a pomegranate in a street in Battersea that all the fruits always fall off and I always pick them up.

39:44You know, you've become a sort of an unofficial scrumper of unwanted fruit. When you say the circularity, I'm picking up and I can tell from how you described your packaging, you know, the sustainability before it became a big word. and as you said, the recycling and the using and the thinking of the planet, but also of your impact and what you can do, has been important for you throughout time. Is that right? Or have you got that naturally within you? Or is it something that, again, has evolved with the business? I think it's evolved with the business and with ours and everybody else's awareness.

40:29But we were always packing using wooden crates, which a lot of people reuse and turn them into impromptu window boxes or apple storage crates. The wood wool can go in the compost or indeed people use it for hamster bedding, apparently. We've had all sorts of... And we try and minimize the use of any plastics, unfortunately, with plants. Recycled pots are a prerequisite. We use some terracotta pots, but the plants need to not dry out. So we have to use something. but as little as possible. When you've been building this business, so you started building Glutton's Gardener. We worked together at Not on the High Street for donkey's years.

41:14Tell me about the challenges of growing the company, you know, because that is a long amount of time to be in business. So you have weathered storms. Yeah. You know, there's people listening today who are at all various stages, if they do have their own company, they're at various stages. What's it been like? Well, it's sort of a sort of evolutionary roller coaster. And I think if we're going back to sort of the early days of mail order, we were doing it in a fairly small scale, first from home, and then we had some space in a wine shop in Fulham that some friends let us have. And again, growing slowly.

42:04At the same time, I had a landscaping business that was paying the majority of the bills. So the long hours and the mail order business was something that I was wanting to develop, but at that stage was certainly not going to keep me. We then started to get some good press. I got my sister to come and work for me, my first sort of employee, family, always good. Yeah, nice, good, cheap to start with, aren't they? She's very organized, much more organized than me and got me massively more efficient. We bought our first computer and it's that stage. We bought a website very early on. and we've got our website, gluck.co.uk, when you could buy a four-letter word domain that meant something.

42:56I remember saying to her, oh, do we have to take credit cards? People will send cheques if they want the goods. Well, your mail order, it was cheques, wasn't it? Yes, yes. We had cheques in the post. Cheques in the post? Yes. And do you remember paying in books with your cheques? Going into the bank and it was a great thrill, sort of. Yeah, it was. You know, when you had a little pile of them. And then, of course, the credit card machine with that bit of... Yes. ...that you had to slide the thing backwards and forwards and that bit of sort of carbon paper that scrunched up and it didn't work properly.

43:34And then a machine in the office that you had to tap all the details in and it worded out, sort of. So this is evolutionary of payment. But yes, I think it was growing. It was growing gradually. We moved with the wine merchants to a bigger premises in Battersea that wasn't a shop. We had more space. We were growing stuff down in Berkshire. We hired some space from a local farmer, grew more and more plants. And then you came along. I think it was a call from Sophie. And I said, oh, we've got a new business that we'd like you to stock your crates on. And I think we had just been badly stung by another inferior company that had arrived and vanished very quickly.

44:30I remember this. Leaving us with, I think, quite an unpaid bill. So we were a little wary. Anyway, eventually we said yes. And that really got things going. It has to be said, you know, in the early days with the grapevines, we were gift of the year quite early on. And, you know, there was one year that we bought in. I was finding every suitable grapevine and buying them in from France. I think we bought in 24 ,000 grapevines one year. And it was crazy. And we had nowhere to grow them. and I had my mother's garden full of them and somebody else's garden. And then you get a phone call from me going, now listen, can you just grow?

45:16Is there any chance? Could you just put the heating on or something in there and does that make them grow fast? And you're like, honey, it actually just doesn't work like that. And I'm like, for God's sake. Yes, it was the photo shoot in January of a dormant grapevine where you would say, I need it now and I need it to be looking good, preferably with grapes. And I said, Holly, have you looked outside? Have you seen the trees? There are no leaves. They are not meant to have leaves. They're not meant to have leaves. But this is really, really inconvenient, Ned. Yes, really inconvenient. What are we going to do?

45:52I remember, it just goes back, you know, I remember we used to go and the team, probably consisting of about five people, half of them being family, we would have to go and look at the newspapers every weekend and we'd clip little interesting companies and things and we'd all bring them in and we'd put them on and we'd have little paper clips and we'd put these little companies in and we'd talk about who we were going to contact and that is I literally can almost remember um you being in the press and that's how we got you and and I mean it just it feels so analog but in a good way doesn't it it feels yeah it feels nice to get to know this, you know, touch the little clippings and call you and all these sorts of things.

46:39And it was an amazing, amazing journey. I mean, you're now calling around France, trying to get these grapevines. You're obviously having to scale the team, scale. What's it like scaling and that sort of heart in your mouth sort of? Yeah, it's a whole new world. You know, as you're trying to scale, obviously the reward is greater, but the costs and the risk are also amplified and you're suddenly taking on members of staff and multiple members of staff. You need extra help packing so you take on more people. You are investing in a better website. As soon as it comes in, it seems to have gone out before you've even accounted for it.

47:29But as long as it keeps coming in, all is well it's when but when there is a blip and when you suddenly realize you've got 24 000 grapevines and actually you're not going to be uh the gift of the year next year and not on the high street and in fact they're you're that you'll be shuffled you know further down the list yeah and then you think christ i've got all these growing plants yeah what am i going to do what am I going to do? And it's at that stage, again, sort of thinking our one wine and vine product suddenly became about 20 different products. And we used lots of other products with grapefuses and actually realized I've got far too many eggs in one basket and we need to diversify and create a much broader range of gifts.

48:22So basically anything that we could grow and that had an edible that we could get, whether it was the orange trees and the marmalade, whether it was coffee plants with coffee and coffee beans, whether it was pomegranate trees with pomegranate molasses, we just went crazy with every possible idea. Some of them worked fantastically and still to this day. Others perhaps weren't so good and fell by the wayside. That's the evolution of products. And you sometimes, with a plant, can start to sort of think of a different way of selling it. Anniversaries are great for gifting, for roses. So we've got golden weddings, silver weddings, pearls, all of those sort of occasions covered.

49:17And again, with the personalization, we add personalized slates and champagne and things like that. So we're creating something, again, a slightly different package, but still is true to our ethos. Yes. And it's the pivoting, right? The pivoting and the innovation that you have to come through. And so you would think that now you're, you know, well on your way, you're building this business. But obviously, you can't stop the entrepreneur because in 2018, I think you were in, is it South Africa, that you had another idea? It wasn't even me. It wasn't even you. It wasn't even me. It was a friend who'd picked something up in a market in South Africa and sent me a picture.

50:06and it was basically a sort of chocolate bar looking piece of compressed earth with some different salad seeds in them and the idea was you broke off chunks of this earth and put them in the garden so it was easier to sow than a seed but it just sort of got me thinking wouldn't it be great to have something that was easy for everybody to be able to grow stuff whether they were an expert gardener or not without the faff of getting compost of buying a lot of buying containers buying anything special and perhaps it was the germ of an idea that um got me sort of working on the development of of grow bar yeah so we sort of experimented we realized that obviously using peat was not a thing that we wanted to do for the environment and coir was which is a waste product from coconut production was the the material to use we reached out to two or three companies mainly in Sri Lanka where coir is produced in in and got to back and forth developing our perfect bar at the same time working with Helen, who's been responsible really for the look of the gluttonous gardener right from day one, back to working with the same people because you know and trust them and is a fantastic designer.

51:40She was the art editor of Country Living and so she sort of got our feeling and sort of created our feeling. And anyway, created the look of some potential grow bar packaging. I wanted it to look like a bar of chocolate and be that sort of size. You know, the Camry Dairy Milk Bar, not something long or thin. You know, something that you could fit in a bag. Anyway, so we wanted something colourful. We wanted something that wasn't massively horticulturally biased. And that was sort of how grow bar evolved. We tested lots of different seed combinations. We tested lots of different ways to make them.

52:32Another sort of reason for developing grow bar was that as we'd grown the gluttonous gardener, I had staff that on quiet days had nothing to do. There is nothing worse than paying for people with not enough to do. So I thought, if I have a product that isn't a plant that's dying or failing in a corner, but we can actually make some stock, wouldn't that be great? So that was sort of part of the thing. The other thing was that Glutton's gardener products don't really work as wholesale products. Although we had them stocked at times in Liberties and various other things, they fail massively in shops because shops are hot and people don't water the plants.

53:16Yes, yes. So the seed idea grew and grew and we wanted to develop a wholesale product using our space and our staff.

53:30I'm sure you're familiar with Royal Mail postboxes and parcel postboxes. I mean, aren't they a recognisable site across the country? I know I walk past them multiple times a day. Well, did you know you can use them to post parcels as well as letters? They're another easy and quick way to send your parcels. And you can even pop those small parcels like earrings or small t-shirts into your postbox at the end of your street. And the best part? You can get proof of posting using the Royal Mail app. Why not find out about how to send your parcels at royalmail.com?

54:10So it was literally born, I mean, roundabout way. Again, I always think about when people are listening to this, it was almost like, let me look at the opportunities that I have. So I've got staff that are not busy enough in certain times. I've got, I need something, I cannot have anything that can die anymore. But I need to actually look at the wholesale environment because actually, again, I'm not out there. I'm not using that opportunity, haven't got that opportunity in our business. Yeah. And then the idea, you know, fit that jigsaw. So that was very, very interesting. I'm wondering if anyone can think about their own companies and wonder what are the missing jigsaw pieces that they have that could be opportunities for them.

54:55Exactly. And back to the old thing of the paranoia of having too many eggs in one basket. Yes. You know, and as your basket grows, your business basket grows, It is very, very tempting if you have one really good supplier to just concentrate on that good supplier and say, well, that's good. They're bringing in all the money I need. However, be warned. Be warned. It won't. Nothing is forever. You have to look after your basket. Yeah. And I'm wondering, looking after your basket, the looking after part, how have you as the founder over this period of time, you know, stringing golden coins onto trees and then taking them all the way back down to the stairs and getting them in the taxi, gone to then growing Glutton's Gardener and all of the ups and downs there, then going to the grow bar and all of the, no doubt, ups and downs there.

55:57How have you, because we often talk about maybe that work-life balance more maybe with women on this podcast. But I'm just wondering for yourself, what has that personal Ned journey been like? I think running a, I think it's still a small business, it becomes sort of all-encompassing and all-involving. And you, as I was saying earlier, you don't really have a job title because you do everything. But as you start to grow, you get good people working with you, good people around you, and the whole organism of your business grows and you probably can step back a little bit. I mean, I say jokingly at some stages of business when everything is going well, I sort of basically become the janitor.

56:48I'm responsible for making sure there are loo rolls and all the bills are paid. but when it's going well and when everything is working well it's you know fantastic but as you well know holly you have fantastic days and very un-fantastic days how have you fared the very un-fantastic days you know because you know the truth of the matter you're in it 30 years i'm it 20 years yeah you know it is a hard old slog and there are i think also i was reflecting today i was like is it because i am just 20 years older than doing not on the high street the first time than doing holly and co like like literally have i is my body is my brain unable to sustain that level that you need and now this is on the bad days by the way everybody listening this is on the bad days but you know what what's your take on that in terms of you literally physically personally the where almost that goes on um i think you you know for your employees your family you don't really have an option of doing anything other than just getting back on the horse and and And riding, you know, what are the options?

58:14And I'm sure we've all been tempted in our business. That's it. Sod it, I'm off. That's it. Look how quickly that came to me. Yeah. That's it. Finished. That's it. I'm not doing it. Well, that's it then. I think it would be likened to maybe a toddler lying on the floor. Yes. That's it. Yes. And yes, we do have that option, but we understand that potentially you have to get up off the floor. at some point in time, you know, and as you said, yeah. Yeah, usually, I mean, anything bad, I will always sleep on it. And the next morning, you know, you've got to go in and your staff is still going to be there.

58:53And at the end of the month, they've still got to be paid. The landlord's going to rent and, and, and. You've just got to keep going. And if one thing isn't working, you've then got to think of, right, Like, what's the next thing that might fill the void where the previous thing isn't providing us? Are you good at picking yourself up off this floor that we're lying on? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'd probably go to sleep on the floor and wake up the next day and, you know, metaphorically go to sleep on the floor. I wake up the next day and I just think, right, onwards. And I can always go out and tinker with some plants for, you know, two or three hours and sort of worry about the landlords who are talking about increasing the rent or the this or the that.

59:41And they're all things that have to be dealt with. And they all seem absolutely horrific at the time. But three weeks later, they won't be horrific. No. So however horrific a time you're having at the moment, it won't carry on forever. Life will go on. And so you've just got to ride it. And talking riding it, do you think the old adage, you know, that this is a journey? I mean, we've been in our game for a long time. The journey rather than the destination. That must be coming more and more true as the years go on. That this is a passage that you've decided to take for your life. Yes. I mean, the destination is when you keel over.

1:00:25I mean, I don't know what the destination is, but it's definitely a journey. It's definitely a journey. I mean, I think probably the sensible route of people becoming a lawyer and earning a lot of money is a destination. But we as a company, there are other places we could go. There are new things we can do. And we certainly haven't finished doing them yet. No, so shape-shifting and evolving. By necessity. By necessity. So tell me, when you look at the future coming to the end of this podcast, are you as excited? I mean, because I'm not saying this. I'm working till I'm 90. I keep saying I'm working.

1:01:08All my years I've said I'm working till I'm 90. As I'm getting a little bit older, I might start to shave that off to now 85-ish. I'm just saying. I'm putting it out there. Maybe even 80. I'm just going to do the whole decade off. All right, so 80. Tell me, are you as excited as you were, more excited? We've now got sort of an end, not an end time coming up, but we've got a lot of things to pack in now, right? Absolutely, absolutely. As motivated as ever? I think on good days, yes. On good days when things are running smoothly and we're developing new grow bars for next year. Sales may be picking up a little bit.

1:01:54When it's good, it's good. I mean, you were talking about ants earlier as a child. Did you ever have an ant farm? That was a strange thing. I did. So you had these two pieces of glass with some sand and some ants. An ant farm is a business. So you, as the business owner, are the person that drips the little bits of sugar onto the top to keep all the ants moving. And if you don't put that sugar in, if you leave it in the heat, all those ants are going to die or leave the ant farm and everything will fail. So it's up to you. So your business. so as a business owner you're basically running an organism that is producing a livelihood for yourself your employees and putting food on the table for your family and that's what that that's essentially and if you can enjoy that why not you actually spend more time at work than you do at home and it's so you enjoy the people you're working with one of the greatest riches i think one of the greatest riches and and and if you can enjoy that part of your life where so many talked about the lawyer being a sort of destination job you know you're working all these years so you can retire so you can have that living part i'm not saying this for all lawyers but you know the idea that we're going with exactly to that point you know you now could actually combine that?

1:03:25Can it be that we can live a good life where we are working in a job that we love and there will be shit days? And that's okay because we go through. When you think about your business, and I'm going to ask you the questions about being on this roller coaster and your greatest lows and greatest highs. I'm wondering if you ever reflect on all of the gardens and all of the pieces of land and little moments all over the country that you helped plant seeds into or have got things blooming because of your company over the last 30 years. Definitely. What a beautiful thought that is. You know, one of the things that's quite interesting, the amount of grapevines that we we have growing throughout the UK.

1:04:15I mean, many, many thousands. And in fact, there is a company based in Tooting that makes wine by collecting grapes from individuals that have got vines in their garden. Oh, wow, I did not know that. And I talked to him at a show last year and I was saying, so what are most of the varieties? And very interestingly, quite a lot of the varieties are the vines that we supply. So it's fantastic to think that potentially we could be producing thousands of bottles of wine from the grapevines that we've sold over the years. Nothing else, lots of grapes for the birds to eat. So that makes me happy as well.

1:04:57How fantastic. Oh, Ned, I've loved this moment. I love this moment so much that we've had our time. I want to ask if you could imagine yourself with your wonderful grapevines, you know, sitting in with your crates in your roller coaster cart. Yes. And if you use that analogy, what would you say has been one of your greatest lows on this journey? I think sometimes running a business, the lows come thick and fast. And other times you can coast for months with very, very few lows. but given time insurmountable problems become solvable and so I suppose generally probably as a self-preservation I try and forget the colossal loads and I've had lots of them but I was trying to think and I genuinely can't think of what was the worst I mean whether it was a fiasco with the landlords or stock or you know there have been so many over 30 years but I I don't have the very worst one yet, but maybe it's still to come.

1:06:07Well, no, maybe not at all. It's the way we look at these things, isn't it? I think it is. It's the way we look at this. And if we're just, you know, and also our muscle grows stronger and stronger to be able to withstand them, I think. Absolutely. Things that would take us down 20 years ago. Now, I mean, it's just like breakfast. Don't worry about it. We've become very thick skinned. Very thick skinned. And let's say the high then. What would be a great high for you? A great high, I think, running a business is when an idea comes to fruition and is endorsed by others early on. So perhaps I'd say in the early days of Grow Bar, when I talked to Kew Gardens and they said, yes, we love them, we'll stop them.

1:06:49That's a great high because that's an endorsement from... Kew Gardens, for someone like you. You and your radishes when you were eight. I mean, come on. That's a rubber stamp. So I say that's a pretty good high. Yeah, that is a great high. Ned, loved every second. You've even made me want to go and plant something just because I love you so much. That's how much you've done for me today and you always do. I'm going to hand over to you now, if I can, where I'm going to ask you to talk to that younger Ned and you radiate something very special to me and I'm really looking forward to listening to this.

1:07:32Okay, Holly. Here is my letter to the younger me. Dear Ned, here is some advice to the younger me from the older and slightly wiser me. When you are the last one to be picked for a team, don't worry too much. One day you'll be in charge of the team and have to do the picking. All of those team players will continue to live and thrive in team world, but will one day envy your singularity. Let your peculiarity become your strength. You'll find it hard to start with, as everybody around wants you to conform and fit into their box, but eventually others will appreciate you for who you are. Develop passions.

1:08:17It doesn't matter what they are or how many you have. Passions will steer your choices in life, love and work, and allow you to eventually find your tribe. You'll try to find a better way to do everything. Even if others don't agree that it's better, let it become your way. Learn to cook and eat well. You have to eat every day of your life, so you may as well enjoy it. Be interested in everything. Find fascination in the obscure and the mundane. If you do this, your life will never be dull. Don't take yourself too seriously Life will be a lot more fun And humour will disarm even the VAT inspector Always sleep on an important email or decision Things always look different in the morning When you're 25 A chap called Tim Berners-Lee will invent something That will enable you to sell your wares to the nation Embrace this idea As it will become your chief source of income as well as being a terrible thief of your time and you'll probably never discover how to monetize social media or the purpose of influencers.

1:09:31Don't worry about being hopeless with numbers. There are plenty of men and machines that are great at that stuff. You may just not understand what they tell you. Don't listen to Jimmy the accountant who will in the early days of your first mail order business tell you you should go and work in McDonald's at least you'll get a free meal there. always prioritize paying companies where you know the name of the owner try to be kind and fair in business in the hope that others will reciprocate even if they don't they may learn by example don't be afraid to try and fail with business ideas not everything will work but you will learn and grow from every experience and finally question everything people that are meant to know best often don't.

1:10:18People in positions of authority and those in high-vis jackets are usually power-hungry egomaniacs who should not be trusted.

1:10:30Hear, hear. Hear, hear. Ned, you just, oh my goodness, you make me, every time I see you, you make me laugh and you make me smile. An insight into your journey today, I've admired you for so many years and you just keep on turning up doing what you do and actually for over all of these years I've known you if I talk about you to anybody no one has a bad word everyone absolutely adores you and you've done that for all of us and all of the community and I know that so many people will be nodding me saying that so I cannot wait to travel the next 10 or 20 years hopefully with you. But yeah, adore you, Ned.

1:11:15Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Holly. It's been a privilege. Thank you for joining me today. If you've enjoyed this episode, can I ask that you share it with a friend and like, subscribe and review it too, so that together we can inspire even more people to follow their dreams to build a life they love.

1:11:42Thank you.