Ready to offer tips to creating the perfect garden, London startup Shoot has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube to raise £350,000 for its gardening website.
Explaining the website’s importance, the Shoot team stated:
“Everyone loves being in a beautiful garden. However, most of us just don’t have the time to learn everything you need to know to be a successful gardener. It is really easy to make mistakes – buying the wrong plants, putting them in the wrong place and not knowing how to care for them. That is what we help you with at Shoot. We tell you what you can plant, where you can put it, and how best to care for it so it will thrive in your garden. We even send you helpful email reminders each month. Our vision is to inspire and empower all gardeners to create the garden of their dreams.”
It was noted that 50% of gardeners revealed that they have lost a plant within a year of purchase and 90% of those plants that died were the put in the wrong places. The annual costs of these dead plants cost £168 million in the UK.
In an effort to solve this problem, Shoot offers gardeners advice on the plants are in their garden and it will send them care reminders each month. Once gardeners reveal the ins and outs of their gardens, the website will recommend plants. All this for the price of £36 per year (for home gardeners) and £180 per year (for professionals).
Also revealing how much traction the website receives, the team explained:
“We know that Shoot is already the fastest growing gardening website in the UK, multi-award winning and is striving to be the market leader. We have over 82,000 members (including many garden designers and landscapers), and over 5,000 premium paid members paying an average of £45 each. We had 1.1m unique website visitors and 4.3m page views in 2014. We have 4,346 inbound links including from the BBC and the Telegraph.
“We also have what we know is the largest expert plant database in the UK with full plant details on over 18,000 plants. We have won many awards including the Garden Media Guild award for best gardening website 2012, and the Good Web Guide awards for both Best Gardening Website 2014 and also overall People’s Choice Award 2014.”
Funds from the Crowdcube campaign will be used for the following:
- 67% on salaries to improve the product
- 26% on marketing
Those who fund Shoot will receive 14.50% in equity. The campaign is set to close on May 29th.
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Shoot for Crowdcube investment from Shoot Gardening on Vimeo.
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