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“My goal is not to be the biggest. My goal is to be the best houseplant vendor here, especially here on the west coast in the North Pacific Northwest,” says Andrej Suske, owner of Cascade Tropicals, who joins Greenhouse Success Stories to share how relentless focus on quality, efficient systems, and deep-rooted passion for plants fuels his thriving business. From selling cut flowers on Berlin street corners at age ten to leading a cutting-edge, lean-driven greenhouse operation, Andrej Suske reveals a journey filled with hard-won lessons, innovations in forecasting and logistics, and insights on surviving both booms and market contractions. For anyone curious about what it really takes to build a standout horticulture business—and why a sense of ownership and love for growing are the keys to long-term success—this episode is not to be missed.
Key Takeaways
- Know your customer and forecast demand relentlessly—success hinges on meeting needs at the right time with the right product.
- Prioritize lean principles—train your team to eliminate waste and boost efficiency, so every hour and every square foot counts.
- Obsess over top quality—if your plants aren’t best-in-class, level up or step out; average isn’t good enough.
- Embrace mistakes as growth—screw up, learn fast, and adapt, but never repeat errors. Progress comes from curiosity and self-ownership.
- Make ordering and fulfillment seamless—streamline your system until retailers think of you first, every single week.
Memorable Quotes
"My goal is not to be the biggest. My goal is to be the best houseplant vendor here, especially on the west coast in the North Pacific Northwest. When a store needs houseplants, the first thing I want them to think of is, 'I place an order with Cascade, and I have it by Friday before the weekend.'"
"I found out when I was a kid that I love growing plants and I love looking at plants. If I can do what I like doing, then I'm already having a big piece of being successful."
"Screwing up is something that needs to happen—if we do a lot of work, we’ll also mess up a lot. We shouldn’t be making the same mistake over and over, but otherwise it’s okay to fail, learn, and get better."
Connect with Andre
Andre on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrej-suske-22060a201/
Cascade Tropicals LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/cascade-tropicals/
Website - https://www.cascadetropicals.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cascadetropicals/?hl=en
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cascade-Tropicals/152626848111704
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Transcripts
My goal is not to be the biggest. My goal is to be the
Speaker:best houseplant vendor here, especially here on the west coast in the, in the
Speaker:North Pacific Northwest. Especially where when a store meets
Speaker:houseplants, the first thing I want them to think of is I place an order
Speaker:Cascade. I place it by Tuesday night. I have it by Friday before
Speaker:the weekend.
Speaker:Hello, everyone. Welcome to Greenhouse Success Stories. Today
Speaker:our guest is Andre Suska from Cascade
Speaker:Tropicals. Very looking forward to hearing Andre's
Speaker:story. He is the owner at Cascade Tropicals and
Speaker:he's very experienced in the greenhouse sector. I'm sure he has,
Speaker:you know, a lot to speak about and to give
Speaker:advice to us today. So welcome to the show, Andre. Thank you.
Speaker:Yes, very happy to have you on here. I was looking through
Speaker:Cascade Tropicals and it looks like you guys primarily
Speaker:do ha houseplants. How come you chose
Speaker:to do house plants, you know, and who are you currently
Speaker:selling to? Could you just give us a bit more info behind
Speaker:Cascade Tropicals? Cascade Tropicals is actually a very
Speaker:old business other than 35 years.
Speaker:A lady named Sylvia started it in the
Speaker:previous houseplant boom, I think in the
Speaker:maybe 80s or whenever there was so a long time ago.
Speaker:And she set up a business essentially
Speaker:buying finished grown house plants
Speaker:and redistributing them to plant
Speaker:shops and garden centers in the Seattle area.
Speaker:And that's what we still do today. I bought Cascade
Speaker:Tropicals in 2017. We
Speaker:started expanding the market that we
Speaker:sell our plants to, that we deliver to, which is
Speaker:Oregon, Washington and Idaho. And since
Speaker:about 12 months, about one year, we are now also
Speaker:shipping plants to the whole western half of the
Speaker:United States, essentially as far away as Ohio,
Speaker:Arizona, Texas. The plants,
Speaker:Cascade cells today are about 30%
Speaker:grown in our own growing facility.
Speaker:And the remainder is shipped in from
Speaker:more than 150 different growers across the whole United States.
Speaker:The unique thing I think about Cascade Tropicals
Speaker:is that we bundle
Speaker:so much availability, so many nice plants from so many
Speaker:different sources that it's really easy for a
Speaker:retailer, which that's our main audience,
Speaker:plant shops and garden setters
Speaker:that. Anytime any one of those
Speaker:retailers needs houseplants, they can easily make an order with
Speaker:us because we have so much variety starting at
Speaker:the never out plants or the bread and butter items that you need to have
Speaker:all the poshes and all the monsteras up to
Speaker:very specific and cool and different new plants.
Speaker:So my idea is
Speaker:we need to be ready every single week to have
Speaker:a really good selection of plants that the retailer wants
Speaker:to bring in. They look beautiful,
Speaker:they look top quality, they are different. Some
Speaker:of them at least are different. They are unique so that
Speaker:the retailer can shine in front of their customer. Bring them
Speaker:in this week and find out on Monday. Oh, half of it already sold.
Speaker:I need to make another order. And then we are there again and we sent
Speaker:them another order. And so forth.
Speaker:And that's the model we have. We
Speaker:focus on exactly that, on
Speaker:bringing in the best plants, having the right
Speaker:inventory for our retailers and then
Speaker:quickly shipping it to them. Make it very
Speaker:easy and the retailer just goes and
Speaker:sells it and we repeat again. So everybody
Speaker:wins. Our business is done online.
Speaker:Our customers, every single customer orders on a web shop.
Speaker:You could almost think of it like Amazon. You go
Speaker:on, you place your order, you see picture. When the customer logs
Speaker:onto their profile, they see pictures of each plant they are
Speaker:buying. They put the order in, it goes
Speaker:through and we guarantee that it gets delivered
Speaker:the same week as long as cutoff times are met.
Speaker:So we have a relatively fast turnaround. The customer can also
Speaker:decide for us to pre price the order. So
Speaker:to put retail prices on those 499, 699, etc.
Speaker:Again, what I want, what we want is that
Speaker:the customer can order easily, quickly.
Speaker:If they choose pre pricing. They just have to tell us how much they want
Speaker:to pre price for. We put the sticker on the plant, the order
Speaker:arrives at the customer's garden center, they put it
Speaker:there, sell it, repeat next week. So you're
Speaker:selling directly to retailers, garden centers.
Speaker:So here in Winnipeg we have what's called, we call it the
Speaker:leaf and it's like a little biosphere dome
Speaker:all year round. So we've got like a tropical area with tropical plants and
Speaker:then we've got Mediterranean area with Mediterranean plants. Do
Speaker:you ever sell directly to biospheres
Speaker:or you know, these places that have very unique, that
Speaker:want very unique plants in their space?
Speaker:Maybe if I understand your question correctly, the question could
Speaker:be rephrased as to be said to like a botanical garden or to
Speaker:a. Yes, yes. The answer is definitely yes.
Speaker:In Seattle there's spheres, the Amazon spheres
Speaker:you may have heard of, and they are actually A very good customer of
Speaker:ours. Every month we send plants, maybe even every
Speaker:week. I don't know that, but we send very many plants to the
Speaker:spheres now. They do not resale anything. They use it in
Speaker:their installation. We also do sell
Speaker:a lot of plants to interior scapers, plant scapers
Speaker:that use our plants in offices and
Speaker:banks and stuff like that. Does
Speaker:it answer the question? Yes, absolutely. Do you ever
Speaker:grow any? What's the craziest plant
Speaker:you've ever grown for a customer? Like, I'm thinking of a
Speaker:really exotic fruit tree. But I know you mostly
Speaker:do plants, not trees. But what would you say
Speaker:is the most exotic out there plant that
Speaker:you've grown? Yeah, there's many.
Speaker:I'm a plant nerd. So I get too excited
Speaker:often about those exotic, weird plants.
Speaker:It'd be hard for me to remember the most exotic right now. Most weird.
Speaker:But we had an order this spring from an
Speaker:interior scaper. They needed Hoya and
Speaker:porsors, et cetera. That needed to be, I can't remember,
Speaker:maybe 10ft long. So we tried to grow
Speaker:big plants, 10 inch pots with very long
Speaker:winds on them as a special order. That was
Speaker:definitely something that is not easy for us to
Speaker:do. We are growing here in Washington state, so
Speaker:when we want to grow stuff like that, we have to put light and heat
Speaker:to. Oh, so just backing up
Speaker:a bit. So now you know you're the owner of Cascade Tropicals, but
Speaker:how did you start in the greenhouse industry? You know, I'm sure
Speaker:you didn't just start owning Cascade Tropicals. Could you tell us a
Speaker:bit more about your story and you know, where it all started
Speaker:and how you got to where you are today? Sure. When I was a kid,
Speaker:I was close to my granddad and he liked gardening.
Speaker:He was not a professional grower or gardener or anything like that.
Speaker:He was a machinist. But he took me every time to his garden
Speaker:and he really enjoyed it. And I learned from him when
Speaker:I was 7, 8, 9 years old how to
Speaker:take care of plants in the garden. And he had
Speaker:a small quart frame in his garden where he grew
Speaker:Paperwhites narcissus for cut to sell it early
Speaker:in spring. He was just forcing the bulbs and then
Speaker:selling them on the street corner in spring. And I
Speaker:helped him with that and somehow that excited me. And then I said, okay, I
Speaker:can do that too. So I did the same thing. In our garden was my
Speaker:family's garden where I grew up in Germany. And
Speaker:I started selling on the street corner plants, flowers
Speaker:Cut flowers. And then I. When you were how old?
Speaker:Maybe 10. Oh, wow. So you were selling plants
Speaker:when you were 10 years old. Okay, that's pretty young. And then I
Speaker:kept essentially expanding that. Obviously this
Speaker:is on a very small scale. Right. And at some point I
Speaker:grew. There was a demand for grafted rose bushes.
Speaker:So I grew rose bushes to sell the
Speaker:plant or root. And in the process you get some cut
Speaker:flowers out of that too, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker:those are my early. I did that obviously at the site next
Speaker:to school. And then I was an apprentice in Berlin and a
Speaker:big greenhouse operation. And when I came home from
Speaker:work, from the apprenticeship, I continue growing plants
Speaker:in my garden and then sell them the same way,
Speaker:basically on a street corner. I grew up in East Berlin or outside
Speaker:of East Berlin. So in different.
Speaker:Environment, flowers were not in ample supply at
Speaker:those times. So it was when you had nice flowers, it was actually easy to
Speaker:sell. And that kind of was
Speaker:a start for me with plants. And then
Speaker:I learned a lot in the apprenticeship in Berlin in that two, three year
Speaker:time. And then that big greenhouse operation in Berlin.
Speaker:Then the wall came down. I went to. Well, before the wall came
Speaker:down, I had to go to military service. And then I
Speaker:went to study horticulture a little bit
Speaker:later in Dresden in
Speaker:Germany and worked a few years over
Speaker:there. And then I came to the United States in 1994 as an.
Speaker:Basically an intern internship. I just wanted to come here
Speaker:to learn English. And I worked at a small
Speaker:nursery in Oregon. Less than a year later,
Speaker:after I arrived in Oregon, the owner of
Speaker:T and L Nursery in Redmond, Washington, asked me if I
Speaker:wanted to come around his nursery. So in
Speaker:1994, late 1994, I started
Speaker:running T and L Nursery in Washington. It's
Speaker:basically. When I came there
Speaker:in 94, it was a three employee, five
Speaker:acre nursery for perennials.
Speaker:I was a general manager there until maybe
Speaker:2000 or 2001, I think 2001, maybe
Speaker:almost 30 years. Ran the business
Speaker:there for the owner. And at the end of that time we
Speaker:had 45 acres of growing and under 20
Speaker:employees supplying the same
Speaker:garden centers basically in Oregon, Washington, Idaho,
Speaker:kind of the same customers were based that we have now at Cascade, just a
Speaker:very different product. Now we sell
Speaker:indoor plants. Back then I sold perennials and a few
Speaker:annuals, but mainly perennials and some body plants.
Speaker:So outside stuff. So really what I most know was
Speaker:really actually perennials, because
Speaker:that's what I did the most. Longest part of my
Speaker:life. And then when I, after I bought Cascade.
Speaker:I obviously had to learn all the house plant now lives that I have today,
Speaker:which in some ways was good for me because
Speaker:when I was not super young anymore. So when
Speaker:you have to learn something totally different, it's still plants,
Speaker:but it's totally different, totally new, different market. It's good for
Speaker:me, boss, and it's good for me. It keeps me on my toes, keeps me
Speaker:engaged and keeps me from
Speaker:being complacent or thinking I know everything.
Speaker:So what made you decide to buy
Speaker:Cascade? What made you think to
Speaker:take that leap between running a business, being a
Speaker:general manager versus now owning and running your own business?
Speaker:The goal, My goal was, you know, I
Speaker:had almost 30 years at PL and then I figured,
Speaker:well, there has to be an end of to. To everything at
Speaker:some point. I've done it a long time and I really enjoyed it
Speaker:doing that. And
Speaker:I really, my main goal was to slow down actually to have to
Speaker:do. Let have less responsibility. Again.
Speaker:Remember, I have the employees then. It was a
Speaker:much larger business than what Cascade Tropicas is.
Speaker:So. My dream was to
Speaker:still be in the business, still be in the greenhouse. That's what I love the
Speaker:most, growing plants but. But also do
Speaker:less and have more time to ski and read books and stuff like that. Well,
Speaker:I'm really bad at that as a
Speaker:part of life that's not working.
Speaker:So from that point of view, it is much smaller now the business that
Speaker:I have, but I still spend a lot of time
Speaker:in the middle of it. How many employees are you at for
Speaker:Cascade? Cascade has
Speaker:approximately 30 employees and then we have about 10 at the
Speaker:growing facilities. The two are physically separated.
Speaker:And for your day to day, where do you find that you're spending most
Speaker:of your time? Are you in the greenhouse or are you behind the scenes
Speaker:with staff? What's your day to day look like?
Speaker:My day to day in Cascade, we have a really good team
Speaker:general manager leadership group that takes care of running
Speaker:that business in Slohomish. I'm
Speaker:at Cascade once or twice a week, one or two days a week.
Speaker:Just more behind the scenes like you were indicating
Speaker:there. Most of my time I spent in our growing
Speaker:operation. There's a lot of it in, in the
Speaker:greenhouse, but a lot of it behind the screen to order
Speaker:supplies, TC cuttings, working on the production
Speaker:plan, forecasting many, many things like that, and
Speaker:helping our teams too.
Speaker:To do the right thing. And one of the big
Speaker:projects we've worked on really the last few years is
Speaker:to develop a system that allows us to forecast
Speaker:demand each Month. Each item that then
Speaker:translates into your C or TC awarder.
Speaker:That then translates into a plant
Speaker:list that our crew here in the production can.
Speaker:Every week we now we create our own app on
Speaker:the phone that accesses the data we have
Speaker:and they can look there this week. They see exactly what cuttings
Speaker:are coming in or what cuttings they have to cut from our own stock,
Speaker:where to plant it, which greenhouse to put it in, and then when to
Speaker:transplant it. So we've been creating a lot of systems like that,
Speaker:helping our group to grow well. This
Speaker:year we put a lot of focus on.
Speaker:Tracking time we spend on each process, whether it's
Speaker:transplanting, order pulling. So we.
Speaker:I am a big believer in lean, lean management, lean
Speaker:principles. So we try to measure
Speaker:how efficient are we. Are we producing
Speaker:more per labor hours this year than last year?
Speaker:So we try to many processes. Some processes are easy to measure.
Speaker:For example, order pulling, planting,
Speaker:propagation. It's very easy to track how much output
Speaker:we create in any one hour. So we do that. Then we use
Speaker:that information and say, let's get better.
Speaker:Let's figure out where we can make it faster, make it easier,
Speaker:not faster, by pushing someone around and say, you need to stick faster. That's
Speaker:not. We go look and try to find
Speaker:waste in the process and eliminate that.
Speaker:Do you have a standard. Way
Speaker:to charge the pricing
Speaker:on a plant based on the number of days the
Speaker:plant is in the greenhouse? For example, you go to a
Speaker:garden center, there's different stages of snake plants.
Speaker:And so of course, because there are different sizes, they'll have different prices. But
Speaker:I've always wondered, like, is that price on that snake
Speaker:plant determined based on number of days in the greenhouse?
Speaker:My answer to that question would be, now, the price of that snake plant
Speaker:is oftentimes a market
Speaker:price that people are willing to pay. But
Speaker:at least that's partially true. There's also.
Speaker:I can tell you how we do it here. We have a
Speaker:model and our data and our spreadsheets
Speaker:that looks at how much do we pay for the cutting.
Speaker:How much does a pot cost, how much does the soil cost?
Speaker:We assign a little bit of a percentage of
Speaker:dollars to taking care of the plant, fertilizer, heating,
Speaker:et cetera, et cetera. We make each plant pay rent,
Speaker:which means we know how long the plant
Speaker:is on the bench. We have a grow library. It says for
Speaker:propagation it's eight weeks, and for finished growing
Speaker:it's six weeks for each plant separate, obviously
Speaker:different. And then we have two calculations
Speaker:for the summer, we charge lesser rent and for the winter, we charge more rent
Speaker:because in the winter we have to turn on the heat and, and the light
Speaker:to grow the plants, the LED lights.
Speaker:That all gives us information on
Speaker:each crop, how the way
Speaker:we look at it is how many dollars of profit it
Speaker:creates per square foot in any one
Speaker:week. And then we use that. So then.
Speaker:Each crop is different. Some of them have a very nice number
Speaker:there, high number. Some of them are barely breaking
Speaker:even, let's say. And then we use that information to
Speaker:decide which crops do we grow, which do we not grow.
Speaker:Sometimes we grow crops that are not super profitable
Speaker:because we feel they give us an edge
Speaker:on the market. But then that,
Speaker:but the prices are mainly set by
Speaker:what. Is kind of standard that
Speaker:people are willing to pay for.
Speaker:Prices. In the last. Really
Speaker:two years, really three years, almost
Speaker:have been suppressed. So prices are kind
Speaker:of on the lower side right now. It's not easy always to
Speaker:make an item profitable. So we, we have to work hard
Speaker:there to, to make sure we, we keep that.
Speaker:Consumers are stressed for money, right? They don't want to pay.
Speaker:This is really different from growing, you know, a vegetable or a fruiting
Speaker:crop. So I have a couple more questions. Just want to talk a bit
Speaker:about the growing side of things. Do you have multiple
Speaker:zones in your greenhouse for different house plants?
Speaker:Okay, so then if you have multiple zones, then technically,
Speaker:wouldn't certain zones be more expensive? Like, wouldn't
Speaker:rent for certain zones be more expensive than others?
Speaker:And do you factor that into that rent payment or is it
Speaker:just on average a general rent payment for
Speaker:these plants? Right now we do not factor that in.
Speaker:The only thing we do is we make a seasonal difference. So in the summer
Speaker:the rent is cheaper than the. But we do not take
Speaker:that into consideration. In theory, if you wanted to get
Speaker:really detailed, we would do that. But we also
Speaker:need to make sure that our systems aren't getting too complicated.
Speaker:And then the value of doing exactly what you are
Speaker:saying there is probably not big enough
Speaker:to warrant making
Speaker:everything more complex. If we were to grow
Speaker:plants outside, not in a greenhouse, then it would have to be
Speaker:definitely a thing. But since everything we do is
Speaker:in the greenhouse, granted, you are very correct. We have some
Speaker:greenhouse space that is very expensive because it has light and heat, et cetera, et
Speaker:cetera. We have some greenhouse space that
Speaker:has very light heat and stuff like that. So in theory we should
Speaker:be doing that, but we don't because it's not big
Speaker:enough. When I look at how can I.
Speaker:Make a bigger difference whether I say on My
Speaker:bottom line on profitability
Speaker:or just this general success of the business and the people who work
Speaker:here, then if I focus on lean. So basically if
Speaker:I do a lot of training with my people so they can do whatever they
Speaker:need to do on their own, I give them the information they need so
Speaker:they don't need to come and ask. Andre, what do we plant this week?
Speaker:But this is all stuff that's in the system now. The system, they
Speaker:are trained on it, they can use it. So if we do
Speaker:all those things, we gain a lot. If we
Speaker:do very aggressive, accurate forecasting
Speaker:where we try to estimate exactly how many do we need to grow
Speaker:for any given months so we have
Speaker:100% sell through of the item without putting it on
Speaker:sale or stuff like that. Those things are
Speaker:the big pieces that are going to make us
Speaker:successful as a growing business, as a
Speaker:production operation. If you want to look
Speaker:at that. I don't talk about
Speaker:quality because if we don't have top quality,
Speaker:we should be business. So it's not something I like to stress
Speaker:because it needs to be there just as much as needs to be assumed.
Speaker:So it's really, ultimately what we do is we manufacture something,
Speaker:it's a plant and we need to be really
Speaker:good at that. Plus we need to be really good at the planning part, the
Speaker:forecasting part, to make sure we don't manufacture something or we don't grow our
Speaker:plant when the customer doesn't want to pay for it
Speaker:or we have too many of them or something. For
Speaker:running a Cascade Tropical, since it's diff so different from, you know, since
Speaker:houseplants are so different from perennials. Have you found
Speaker:that your biggest challenges have been with,
Speaker:you know, growing household plants, especially when you get
Speaker:requests for different varieties? Has that been a big
Speaker:challenge or has a bigger challenge been
Speaker:forecasting what plants are going to sell? Or
Speaker:maybe it's in staffing. What do you think your biggest
Speaker:challenge has been since owning Cascade Trout
Speaker:Tropicals? Yeah, it's a
Speaker:variety of challenges. When I
Speaker:go back in 2017, when I bought Cascade,
Speaker:I didn't know houseplant, I didn't know what a sense of areas, I didn't know
Speaker:what a monster or unsure you.
Speaker:So obviously there was some learning curve there for me just to know what I'm
Speaker:looking at. I also didn't have any
Speaker:sense for prices, what normal prices would be, etc.
Speaker:Etc. But those things you pick up as you
Speaker:run and especially when you screw things
Speaker:up, you learn from it.
Speaker:And then the biggest
Speaker:challenge we had from the very first years was that
Speaker:the demand was larger than what we could accomplish or that we
Speaker:could provide really. So we built
Speaker:the first new greenhouse in 2018.
Speaker:Then the plan was that greenhouse would be big enough for at least five years,
Speaker:maybe longer. The greenhouse we built in
Speaker:2018 was like four or five times the size of what
Speaker:Cascade used to be. Then came Covid.
Speaker:So there's another big challenge in 2020.
Speaker:And then at the end of 2020, it was clear that that
Speaker:five year plan for that one greenhouse was not working out at all. We were
Speaker:way too small in 2020, already
Speaker:in the second half of 2020. So
Speaker:we decided to build to double our size basically
Speaker:in 21. So in 21 we doubled our size,
Speaker:added more space, more, more office, more,
Speaker:more facilities, everything. And.
Speaker:That was good. We were lucky with COVID that the demand for
Speaker:plant was so high. Right. So
Speaker:during those years that the challenge was
Speaker:kind of a too fast growing business.
Speaker:Right. More hiring, putting together good teams, et cetera,
Speaker:et cetera. All the normal things. When you grow faster than
Speaker:it's. I kind of like more
Speaker:organic growth better. But it was great to have this
Speaker:because obviously we got to get
Speaker:to a level that we would otherwise not have been for a long time.
Speaker:With. COVID when, you know, of course there was that big boom
Speaker:with houseplants. Everyone's home, they want to beautify their
Speaker:spaces a lot more. Mental health. Were you ever nervous that
Speaker:oh no, this is a big boom, we're trying to match this boom.
Speaker:What if it dips and all of a sudden
Speaker:this big market doesn't exist anymore? Did
Speaker:that ever go through your head? Every day. I didn't think
Speaker:it could. It could continue. And
Speaker:I'm generally a more careful kind of person
Speaker:or more. I don't know if you want to call it nervous, but
Speaker:yes, worry about things, all sorts of things
Speaker:that could happen. Potentially I do a little too much of that.
Speaker:It was always on my mind. It was always when we expanded, especially
Speaker:then that second expansion. I had a clear plan in my head,
Speaker:if everything falls apart, what am I going to do? So I
Speaker:felt safe there.
Speaker:I didn't leverage much or something like that.
Speaker:So obviously it wouldn't be desirable to fail
Speaker:there. But if you would have to a degree of. If the market would have
Speaker:collapsed faster and more.
Speaker:I would have been okay. But I think there was a plan for that.
Speaker:But anyway, the way it turned out, it wasn't. It didn't collapse really. It
Speaker:did change a lot, obviously. So the challenge
Speaker:from first was really fast. Growing business.
Speaker:Then the challenge became, how do we not lose.
Speaker:Sales, essentially, if you just look at
Speaker:top dollars. Or, you know,
Speaker:dollars per month, dollars per year. So we
Speaker:had to now start getting aggressive in
Speaker:how do we maintain our sales, how can
Speaker:we avoid having our sales cut in half or
Speaker:anything like that. When Covid
Speaker:subsided and we. So we
Speaker:started hiring salespeople.
Speaker:We expanded the territory we shipped to.
Speaker:We did many things to try to
Speaker:be as competitive as we possibly can be
Speaker:and still offer that value to the retailer. The retailer was still
Speaker:there. They are still there today. They're going to be there in 50 years, too.
Speaker:And if the retailer has a partner, like a supplier, like a
Speaker:greenhouse, like Husky Tropica can bring top
Speaker:quality every week, make it easy, they
Speaker:will come back. And I knew that
Speaker:from having run TNL so long and having gone
Speaker:through 2008, 2000. I've
Speaker:seen recessions or I've seen problem times,
Speaker:or whatever you want to call that. So. And, and really,
Speaker:we've. Each time has challenges
Speaker:and you have to adapt the business, change the business, but we always
Speaker:did. In fact, when I look back at tnl
Speaker:times, we came out stronger after
Speaker:each of those crises or whatever, problem
Speaker:times. And I knew we would do the same.
Speaker:Now, the customers there, people love plants, especially
Speaker:in bad times. People actually buy more plants, maybe.
Speaker:So. From that point
Speaker:of view, I have high confidence we do need to adapt the
Speaker:business. We don't need to do the right thing. We do shift
Speaker:appropriately to make sure we stay profitable and we do the right thing
Speaker:and the customer, and we stay relevant to the customer.
Speaker:Just going back to the growing side, what did you find?
Speaker:Um, what was. Was there a time where
Speaker:you lost a bunch of house plants or,
Speaker:you know, a bunch of products, you couldn't figure out how to grow them?
Speaker:Uh, did you ever go through a learning curve
Speaker:with that and growing the product? Yeah, I
Speaker:killed many, very many. What was a. What was a time
Speaker:where you were particularly struggling with growing
Speaker:a type of houseplant? Do you have a story about
Speaker:that kind of instance? We,
Speaker:especially in the beginning, because I didn't. I
Speaker:knew how to grow perennials really well. I didn't know house plants.
Speaker:So there's so many really big differences. You know, you,
Speaker:you, you want high humidity, you want high
Speaker:temperature. Where normally with. I would say, okay, we are going to grow an
Speaker:Aggie plant. And when you grow house plants, oftentimes high
Speaker:humidity, high temperature are good things. Not always.
Speaker:I made a lot of mistakes.
Speaker:We didn't shape plants enough. So the whole Thing
Speaker:about, you know, you have more light, you have more
Speaker:photosynthesis, you have a bigger plant or a stronger plant.
Speaker:Not true at all really. For House you have to really put it in perspective.
Speaker:You have to learn the relationship of.
Speaker:Light, heat and water. New basically
Speaker:many things are still the same, but
Speaker:so there was a lot of. I bought ton of
Speaker:really cool looking tissue culture that was really expensive
Speaker:that then either didn't come out variegated like it was
Speaker:supposed to be and I had to sell it for
Speaker:a tiny fraction of what I paid for the tissue culture
Speaker:or because.
Speaker:Or when we grew a beautiful plant out of it, the price had
Speaker:been cut in half on the market. So we couldn't even get the price
Speaker:anymore that we paid for the tc. That was
Speaker:all the whole adjustment after past Covid where
Speaker:obviously during COVID prices were jacked up way out
Speaker:of, out of order. So then when they came down,
Speaker:sometimes they came down really fast. And then if I buy a PC
Speaker:it takes me at least 20 weeks to. To make
Speaker:a finished plant plant out of it. Usually more than that.
Speaker:In, in. So in that time frame.
Speaker:The price had already dropped so much that then I couldn't sell it at a
Speaker:profit anymore. But those things happens, you learn from it and then you start becoming
Speaker:more careful. You know, screwing up is
Speaker:every day needs to happen. If we do a lot of work, we
Speaker:can also screw up a lot. Shouldn't be screwing up the same
Speaker:thing over and over again. Basically not learning. But
Speaker:otherwise it's okay to screw up and learn and get better.
Speaker:Do you have any climate controls or any
Speaker:software that you work with to track plant growth and how things are
Speaker:doing? No, it's just all based on the growers.
Speaker:The eye. The eye, yeah. Okay. And then good people that
Speaker:also do, you know, our growing is done by, by a
Speaker:few very good people there. What about with tracking how long
Speaker:a plant has been in the greenhouse for? Are you just recording that
Speaker:like you know, pen to paper or do you have
Speaker:I don't know like little like chips or something that go on the bottom of
Speaker:the pot of a house plant that tracks like the days
Speaker:the. Plan itself doesn't have any tracking on it. But we do
Speaker:all work. We basically run paperless here. Right. So when
Speaker:this week we have a heavy ship week meaning shipping coming incoming. So
Speaker:a lot of TC and ERC coming. There's no
Speaker:piece of paper printed to show anybody what's coming. It's all
Speaker:on our data systems ultimately Google sheets,
Speaker:that's most of the work there. So.
Speaker:The Data is there, what's coming in the data is there, what
Speaker:to plant it in and how many cuttings to stick in each plug and which
Speaker:greenhouse to set them down in and who planted them
Speaker:and how fast they planted them. All of that is in the
Speaker:data. We can backtrack.
Speaker:If I find a plant in the greenhouse and I get. I can backtrack to
Speaker:a degree. When did we stick those cuttings or something like that. Each
Speaker:plant also get, or each crop gets a label with some of that information.
Speaker:The vendor of the ERC, for example, et cetera. So we can backtrack
Speaker:a lot of things, but each plant itself doesn't have any tracker
Speaker:on how long it's exactly been there. I mean
Speaker:that production label we use, it does say exactly
Speaker:the daily plan on it. So if you pull it out and look at it
Speaker:can calculate how many days. Well, I, I assume that a
Speaker:chip like that would just make everything quite a bit more expensive. So
Speaker:it makes the. I'm not surprised to hear your answer.
Speaker:What are your plans for the future? Like, what's your
Speaker:vision with Cascade Tropicals? How do you want the company to
Speaker:expand? Do you want to build more greenhouses or
Speaker:are you going to grow the network of growers that you're currently working with?
Speaker:What? Yeah, we.
Speaker:Will most likely not build more greenhouses. That is not.
Speaker:I'm not super interested in that.
Speaker:Cascade can grow its sales a lot
Speaker:with the facility we have right now, the two facilities.
Speaker:And that's how many. Acres total we have
Speaker:in Snohomish. I don't remember to be honest.
Speaker:Maybe. Probably only 2 acres
Speaker:in Storhomish. And the growing is about
Speaker:the same size greenhouse space. Right.
Speaker:So. We can
Speaker:accomplish a lot more in that space that we have today
Speaker:by again by going applying lean
Speaker:principles, increasing efficiency make things
Speaker:easier for employees.
Speaker:We can move more plants, we can sell more plants.
Speaker:One of the biggest challenges is always going to
Speaker:be the good forecasting.
Speaker:We are working more with our growers
Speaker:where we buy plants to, to be more targeted, to be
Speaker:more clear what we want when we are improving our shipping
Speaker:processes constantly so the plants arrive in a great
Speaker:condition. At the garment center, our government plan shop,
Speaker:we are working quite a bit on.
Speaker:Making our sales operation more
Speaker:professional. When I say that, I mean the sales reps we have
Speaker:and frontline employees that take care of customers to, to
Speaker:give do more training, have more systems to, to run
Speaker:it more professionally. There
Speaker:we every year we make updates to our webshop.
Speaker:So basically our Amazon where our customers log
Speaker:on and place Their orders.
Speaker:My goal is for our customers to not have to call
Speaker:us, ideally, but they can do everything online, just like you would never
Speaker:call Amazon right to get a past
Speaker:invoice or anything like that. So we are constantly working on
Speaker:making that better. In general.
Speaker:We feel there's a lot of opportunity out there, and
Speaker:we are working hard to capture as much as we can.
Speaker:But my goal is not to be the biggest.
Speaker:My goal is to be the best houseplant vendor here, especially here
Speaker:on the west coast in the North Pacific Northwest, especially where
Speaker:when a store needs houseplants, the first thing I want them to think of is
Speaker:I place an order Cascade. I place it by Tuesday night, I have it
Speaker:by Friday before the weekend. It comes fully
Speaker:priced. If they choose to do that, it's easy, it's
Speaker:quick, it's reliable. Our order fulfillment
Speaker:is over 98%. We
Speaker:measure that every week. Something very important to me.
Speaker:If the customer orders 100 plants, we promise them they
Speaker:get 98. 2 they don't get because we
Speaker:couldn't find them in the greenhouse, let's say, or we
Speaker:had a wrong inventory, essentially. So
Speaker:we work very hard to have accurate inventory. 98
Speaker:order. 98% order fulfillment, I think in our industry
Speaker:is going to be almost nobody meeting that. I don't think there's hardly
Speaker:anybody getting to 95%. And I'm talking about
Speaker:every week. Not. Not in slow weeks only, but
Speaker:every week. You know, since you started.
Speaker:Way back, you know, with your. In the garden, when
Speaker:you were a kid learning how to grow plants, do you think that
Speaker:you would consider yourself a grower first and an
Speaker:owner second, or to become, you know, an owner?
Speaker:You were a grower first. Would you say that
Speaker:that's important for people looking to start up, you
Speaker:know, a greenhouse of their own, that they should learn the growing
Speaker:side of things first? What's your opinion on that? Did you say to
Speaker:be an owner first and then a grower or vice versa? Is that what you
Speaker:said? Vice versa? Because it sounds like when you first.
Speaker:When you first got started back when you're
Speaker:explaining your story and how you got into greenhouses, you
Speaker:said started with you working in the garden and
Speaker:you went to horticulture school and then you were a general
Speaker:manager. Do you think that your experience
Speaker:with growing plants and being a grower
Speaker:was fundamental to you being a successful
Speaker:owner? Yes, I
Speaker:think the main thing is that
Speaker:I found out when I was a little boy, when I was a kid, that
Speaker:I love growing plants and that I love looking at
Speaker:plants that I Love the beauty of plants.
Speaker:And I think that it
Speaker:has been a blessing for me, if you will,
Speaker:because I can do every day, almost every day, what I really
Speaker:like doing. And if I can do what I like doing,
Speaker:then I'm already having a big piece of
Speaker:being successful. Right. So I think for me
Speaker:personally that has been very important.
Speaker:And the other aspect maybe
Speaker:that I think is important for me is that
Speaker:when I grew plants in our garden and
Speaker:sold them, I was already confronted with problems. I
Speaker:was already screwing things up and I had to learn how to overcome
Speaker:that. I had to figure out basically problem solve and had to
Speaker:be critical of what I was doing. Sometimes I had stuff that
Speaker:I thought was beautiful, but consumer didn't think that they wouldn't buy
Speaker:it. So I had, I learned very quickly
Speaker:that I had to own this. And if they didn't buy it, it's not because
Speaker:they, they're stupid or they don't know what they're doing. It's because I
Speaker:didn't do the right thing. No, I didn't offer them the right product at the
Speaker:right time. So basically owning what
Speaker:I do, whether you're an owner or not, doesn't matter. But
Speaker:owning my life, owning my actions, owning
Speaker:or owning my inaction or owning that I improve
Speaker:something. And I asked many questions of many people
Speaker:to try to figure out how to do something. I remember when I started grafting
Speaker:roses there for a couple of years, it was something that was. I
Speaker:had no clue at all. And I never learned it in school or
Speaker:in the greenhouse I worked in building. So I always tried to
Speaker:find people that would help me. Most people are very helpful. Most people
Speaker:don't happy to show someone what to do or not to
Speaker:do. But you have to go ask. And.
Speaker:That'S been a big part of my success that
Speaker:I've never been shy to. Okay, who can I ask? Who can I go to.
Speaker:Oftentimes asking two or three people. So I make sure that
Speaker:I get two or three different answers so I can pick the best.
Speaker:Stuff like that. So, so I think, but, but basically
Speaker:I've always been, if you want to look at it that way, an
Speaker:owner. Because I've always owned what I did,
Speaker:the mistakes and the successes. And I've always
Speaker:tried to figure out how can I do it better.
Speaker:And I've never given up easily. If something didn't work out, I'll try
Speaker:again. Sometimes a little bit too much. Sometimes it's better
Speaker:to give up earlier, but that's not me.
Speaker:Yeah, so you, you've always been I would say a grower and an
Speaker:owner like you sold what you were growing since you
Speaker:were 10 years. 10 years old. Yeah. Which is. It
Speaker:really helped me early because I was just on the street corner, there's a bucket
Speaker:of flour selling it. But I still saw some of
Speaker:them sold like hotcakes. Some of them took forever, some
Speaker:of them never sold. So I
Speaker:understood quickly here, I need to pay attention.
Speaker:What the consumer wants, I need try to learn
Speaker:that. And obviously that's true for all of
Speaker:us. And the better we can be at that, and if we can
Speaker:scale that, then we have
Speaker:a good chance. What advice
Speaker:would you give to other people looking
Speaker:to start up a greenhouse, looking to get into growing and,
Speaker:you know, start up a greenhouse of their own. What would your advice
Speaker:be? Well.
Speaker:Think about where. Who's your customer, you know, who's going to want
Speaker:that plant, how much are they willing to pay for
Speaker:it, and when do they need it? Because the year is not
Speaker:the same. Every week changes.
Speaker:So really goes back to forecasting,
Speaker:figuring out when do you need to be there with a certain thing, who's
Speaker:going to buy it from you, one of the biggest pieces.
Speaker:And obviously, you have to
Speaker:be focused on top, top quality.
Speaker:And you have to be focused on if the goal is to have it in
Speaker:the first week of May, you have to have it in the first week of
Speaker:May. You can't go and say, oh, the weather was bad this spring, so
Speaker:it's already the first week of June. If that's how you
Speaker:operate, you more likely not be successful if you figure
Speaker:out how to get it right again. Everybody's allowed to screw
Speaker:up, but not too many times on the
Speaker:same issue. So that's really
Speaker:some of the most important things. If you were to be a growing
Speaker:operation and be efficient.
Speaker:Use lean. Learn about lean manufacturing.
Speaker:I visited Toyota one time, but you don't have to do that.
Speaker:You can learn on YouTube what lean means. There's many things.
Speaker:Takes a long time to learn it, but it's not difficult. You just learn. Just
Speaker:like everything else, you learn a little bit at a time.
Speaker:You said lean helps.
Speaker:Us to run our life. Really, it helps us
Speaker:run, manage our employees much better.
Speaker:And obviously it helps us to create a manufacturing
Speaker:operation that is efficient. And last,
Speaker:you know, thank you so much for your time today, Andre.
Speaker:Last question I have for you is, what is your proudest moment as a
Speaker:grower? As a grower, not as an owner. But I
Speaker:guess you're always both. Yeah, the. The
Speaker:satisfaction I get when we have beautiful racks of
Speaker:beautiful plants that go to customers. Or
Speaker:maybe even then once in a long while when I
Speaker:can visit a customer and see they have a lot of our plants, they
Speaker:look good. Or when I can go with the driver to deliver
Speaker:some plants to a customer and they say, wow, this is what pool or, or,
Speaker:you know, sometimes it does. I don't go out very much,
Speaker:unfortunately, like that, but sometimes I go with a driver or with a sales
Speaker:rep and, and I see the plants from Cascade arrive at a, a
Speaker:garden center and there's. Their customers are come
Speaker:running to the, to the rack that we unload
Speaker:and try to pick plants off of it
Speaker:because they like it. So, you know, those
Speaker:are. Points of
Speaker:happiness. Okay, well, thank you so much for your
Speaker:time today. I'm sure we've had a ton of
Speaker:valuable lessons pulled from this podcast and from
Speaker:all of your lessons and your experience. So, yeah,
Speaker:thank you for doing the show. Thank you very much.
