With Spring in full bloom, everyone's starting to think about their gardens, flowers and warmer weather to come.
We welcome PittMoss CEO Brian Scott back to Business as Usual to talk about the many ways his environmentally friendly potting soil creates a lot of green.
PittMoss calculates that in 2020, its products prevented 81,111 cubic feet of peat moss from being extracted, which equates to the reduction of 811.11 metric tons of C02 emissions. Annually, PittMoss gives each customer an Environmental Savings Certificate, which displays their calculation and certifies a specific number of metric tons of C02 emissions they’ve avoided that year.
Plus, with its new funding campaign on Republic, small investors can put a little bit of their "green" into the PittMoss to help make it grow.
Transcription:
Good afternoon, everyone. It is Audrey Russo, President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, very thrilled as I am each and every day, and today is no exception. I'm going to introduce brian scott, CEO of pit moss, more formally in a moment. But before we get started, I'd like to get some housekeeping out of the way, and express appreciation for those who support us. And that is Huntington bank, thanking them for always being with us each and every day, and making sure that Pittsburgh is an amazing place for people to do business and build their lives. If you don't know anyone at Huntington, let us know, we're happy to connect you with them. Also 40 by 80. That's a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pittsburgh tech Council. And that is where we do work to help not just entrepreneurs, but also those who aspire to be entrepreneurs and people who aspire to get engaged in the tech ecosystem of their future. Stay tuned, because we are have, we do have some announcements coming up, hopefully, in the next month, about an apprenticeship program that it will make sure that we are addressing and including people from all over in the fields that all of us on this call know are in high demand. So Jonathan Kersting is with us each and every day. He's vice president of all things storytelling, and media, and radio, and you name it t Q magazine, he's the man on the job on the scene, talking to people each and every day to make sure that we're highlighting people and right now he's doing the robot. I did not ask him to do that. But you can't hold a good man down. So anyway, we've muted your microphones only because we don't want to hear what's in the background. And hopefully you can hear dogs in my background. And we've asked for you to participate in the chat and ask our guests a little bit about what he and his company have been up to. So Brian Scott, no stranger to us at the tech Council, but no stranger, either to the show, he was on the show, I think over a year ago. And it was pretty cool to have an opportunity to talk about what he was up to and what he was building, he's got a great story, we're gonna wind it back a little bit and talk about Brian, the man and the man who built this, this company. So pit moss, and you can look it up. But it's I think it's pit moss calm, and you will be able to see what he's been up to. So here's brian scott. And of course, in his background, he's the ad campaign is going on right behind him. But I want to welcome him because we're going to talk about a lot of things. We're going to talk about root balls, cannabis co2 emissions. You know, even if you recall the last time we talked a little bit about Mark Cuban Shark Tank, but really what he's up to now, so we're not necessarily looking back, we're looking to the future. So thank you for being here. Brian. Welcome.
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Audrey. I just like meeting with you guys.
Well, how are you doing? How has it been?
It's been great. We've been having a fantastic year, where COVID has been a pain for everybody else, it's actually been really good for us a lot of people home gardening, you know, doing their own growing, we have really tried to focus on that there have been both Pete and seed shortages. And our product is peat free. And we also give away free seeds with all of our orders online. So both have been really good for us.
So wait a second. So the supply chain dilemmas that we experienced all of us and in our work, you're saying that it actually hit your world as well with seeds.
Yeah, both with seeds and with peat. So, you know, there was just such a huge flood of people gardening for the first time last year that there was a big seed shortage. And this year, the same thing, people knew it was kind of coming. So the supply chains definitely been disrupted. You know, we tried to order like 2000 seed packets last fall. And it took us going to like five different vendors to get enough of them. Yeah, it was crazy.
So what kinds of seeds Can I ask? Yeah, like we were favorites.
Yeah. For us. Like we're always looking for vegetable seeds for people to grow their own food. You know, occasionally we'll do some flowers. But really, with COVID. It has been more about giving home gardeners the chance to be successful growing their own food. That's what we've really focused on.
So the proliferation of urban gardening, or has it been just suburban and rural or wanting to
talk, it's all of that really, I mean, it's you we were talking a little before the show, but it's a bunch of things. It's urban urban gardening, believe it or not, we have a chicken bedding product and the chicken Chicken bedding for people in urban atmospheres. So many people are getting chicken and chicken coops right now. I think I grew like 5,000% last year. Yeah, nationwide. So so many more people are doing that. Um, cannabis we talked about more and more states are legalizing cannabis. So we're finding like home growers, they're using our product to grow cannabis. It's just like, across the board, people doing regenerative agriculture, you know, across the board, people are just growing way more today than they were two years ago.
So. So what do you What's your growth been? Like? Can you share with us how much your growth has been since? Since we saw you last year?
Yeah, yeah, since um, we had like really super growth like five years ago when we first started launching our products, but we have been growing typically 40 to 50% a year. Last year, we grew a little over 40%, the first quarter of this year, we grew 127%. So we more than we really did way better than doubling in the first quarter. I can tell you for April, it's almost done. We're gonna more than double what we did APR a year ago as well. So and they're starting to turn into big numbers for us. So again, we were talking about hiring people, like we're hiring a bunch of people right now. A little more seasonal, but for the next two to three months, like we're gonna be slammed, every day we have trucks coming in and out of here.
So where are you selling? Because perhaps seasonality isn't the same everywhere. I mean, here in Pittsburgh, obviously, you see it spike.
Yeah, we're in about so our wholesale is about 150 garden centers, mainly in the northeast, Ohio in 22. States. We sell online to all the states in the Canada, some foreign countries. Our commercial growers are like commercial horticulture people they're normally buying in the fall in over the winter, so that they can start stuffing the greenhouse, you know, in December, January, February. So there's actually a couple cycles to our business. But for more like the retail customer, yeah, we see people in the desert southwest and in Florida, they start buying in like January, February. And up in this part of the country, people start buying in like April, you know, fat March, April, May, that sort of timeframe. And believe it or not, our business is dead by the end of June. So really everybody that's buying soil or plants, most of them have planted what they want to by the end of June. So
Wow. So what do you do go on vacation? I
get summer vacation? Yes, I feel like a teacher.
No, that probably means me to expand you to the southern hemisphere,
right? Yeah, that's it. Exactly. Um, so one thing I will tell you, this is kind of a private group. If there's a one from the press here, you're not allowed to write this. I'm going to embargo it. But we are working on a deal with a local Pittsburgh nonprofit, to open our first facility in Lebanon. And they're going to use it to grow, to use paper to convert it into soil to use it to grow food for refugees in Lebanon. That's gonna be our second location. We're working on a licensing deal with them right now.
Wow. Not Lebanon, Pennsylvania,
not Lebanon, Pennsylvania. I mean, they did over a year of testing over an Arizona like in a desert climate. And they found that our soil was by far the best thing they ever tried for growing in that sort of climate. So it's perfect for that.
So to remind everyone about pice moss tell everyone about Yeah, no.
So we actually make soils out of all recycled paper materials. So like waste paper and newsprint cardboard, we'd bring in material that's recycled in the Pittsburgh market, and and we convert it into soil and to take a little bit of a step back from there. Our current soil economy really makes no sense and most people don't know this. But almost all the soil we buy is made out of peat moss, p 80. And 98% of what we buy in the US is mined in Canada, shipped across border here converted into soil where people have perlite wetting agent lon to it converted into soil and then distribute it from there. So it really makes no sense there's terrible carbon emissions with peat mining. You don't even need the light it on fire as soon as you expose it to light and air at oxidizes co2. So it really is a terrible, terrible industry. In terms of what we're doing today. We all think it's great. It's a green industry. Hey, but the fact that we're digging up PII causing carbon emissions, then shipping it all over North America for us to use, it just makes no sense. So our product was developed in a way so that we could create a small factory in every major metro area, and convert what would be landfill waste into soil instead. And it's frankly, just way better for plants in the environment. You can use way less water and much less fertilizer and still get a bigger, healthier plant.
So So Can people come and donate to you?
Yeah, we have people drop off paper and cardboard all the time they come to the factory and just drop stuff off. Yeah.
Wow.
You know, from Blue tree every three weeks with an entire, like, SUV load of paper and cardboard. I love that gathers it from our neighbors and everything. So yeah, that's awesome.
That's awesome. So maybe we should try that kind of campaign. Would that be helpful to you? For sure, yeah,
that would be great. We're actually working with beaver County, we're gonna do a recycling program with three middle schools. So the biggest problem with almost all paper, really, with any recycling, if you think about how much contamination there is, so pizza boxes with a bunch of grease, a lot of like mail envelopes that we get that have a plastic window, we need to tear that plastic out of it. So the hardest thing for us is just making sure that we're removing a contamination. So the more we can do with people that give us really clean paper, like that really helps us keep our cost reasonable.
And so how do you separate what's your separation process.
Um, so most of what we do is we buy from recyclers locally, they go out and gather paper, and then they bring it in. Typically, we do not use male waste because of all the plastic in it, except for here in the in the office, like we all tear our plastic out of our paper, and then recycle the paper. But most people don't do that. But every single piece of paper or cardboard that we use, we hand sword, so it's pretty labor intensive. There are really good tech solutions appeal tape off of cardboard right now, and things like that. So that's the kind of stuff that we still do by hand.
So you don't think that someone's working on some robotic sorting?
I would love to do that. Who are people at CMU that can help us peel paper off of cardboard? That's what we want to do.
Is that is that the biggest obstacle is peel the tape off. And then the plastic.
Yep. And plastic off of like news. You know, male waste, like that sort of thing? Yeah.
Yeah, it's sort of interesting that people are still using those kind of plastic windows and all the plastic. Yeah. So what about magazines? Will you take magazine? Yeah, we
take magazines, we take the thing I tell people, a lot of people when we first started, we could only use newsprint. And if you think of that rough paper where you try it, there's one direction and the thing is, although newspapers are going away, that kind of paper hasn't gone away, because it's the cheapest least process paper. So a lot of our mail waste, like a lot of the ads that we get are that kind of paper. And that's actually really, really good paper for what we do. We can process magazines, but it's a little harder because they have more clay to them, so that they're a little more slick. So we can use those, but we need to mix them in in a certain amount in order for it to work properly.
So is there a ratio? What's the ratio that
so we protect all of that with our trade secrets? So we can use some cardboard some magazines, right? But, but that's almost like a secret formula for us how much of each we can process for a batch of what we're doing. So yeah, we we protect that?
Well, I was not asking to give away your secrets, but I was just trying to see if there are people who could contribute. And what that mix really is. So I'm glad to see that kind of recycling, maybe there are things we can do to help draw some attention to that. Because when when the recycling goes into the trash from the city, do you get that do you are you work with any of those recycling centers
most so most of those centers, we don't most of the people that we work with have paper collection areas. So that way it's much cleaner. This single stream waste is still a really really big problem like you guys probably read all the time about single scream and people say it gets recycled and a lot of times it really just doesn't Well, for us. It's super, super hard to use. It's so labor in In terms of that, like we really can't do it.
And so you're What is your business? What percentage is wholesale? And what is your retail? Can you share that with us?
Yeah, from a from a volume perspective, we are better than half commercial. That's big volume that's shipping truckloads of material to people. But it's also less expensive than like what we sell retail. So from a revenue perspective, we're about a third, a third and a third right now in terms of what we sell retail, like direct on our website, or on Amazon, versus what we sell wholesale, which is about half of that price, and then commercial, which is about half of that wholesale price. So for us, it's all about like volume, and packaging, and that drives all of your pricing, really. So it's about a third, a third, a third on revenue, but our commercial is more than half of our volume. And then and then our wholesale is like 30 to 35% of the volume. And then our retail is a smallest percentage, but it's the highest price material, because it's the nice packaging, we have to pay for shipping, like all of that sort of thing.
Right? And so in the new growth, how have people found out about you with that amount of growth? What has been your strategy in terms of marketing?
Well, I think really our biggest deal is that we have a super long sales cycle. So I use example, all the time of like a farmer may hear of us, or hear of like a new type of corn. And that farmer is not going to put all new seeds in his entire crop, right? It's too risky. So the thing that we find is, every year we about double our number of customers. But more importantly, all of our existing customers keep increasing the amount that they're buying from us. So for example, I'll tell you, we have a medical cannabis grower in Pennsylvania, that we work with them for 18 months, and they only bought $5,000 worth of material from us, we just finished our last trial with them, we got them a 12% yield increase, a 5% increase in THC, and they bought over $50,000 from us in the first quarter. So that's a good example of like, that's somebody we've been working with for a long time. But now that we're converting them, but they'll be 150 to $200,000 buyer from us every year now. That's just one operation.
So are they so they are eliminating peat. They're eliminating peat moss.
So they're buying from us a peat reduced mix that we make. And we're trying to flip them over to a peak cocoa core based blend that we make that would get them peat free. So for us, it's kind of a transitional product right now. We're trying to get people to go peat reduced first. And then p3 is the next step.
So you're detoxing them, right.
Tell them to kick the Pete habit,
like I haven't kicked, you know, you might when I'm listening to you, I'm also thinking that maybe you should start like a coffee. Maybe there's like, you know, something that you can do with coffee in terms of cocoa beans and that whole market down there. I don't know enough about it. But
it's interesting you say that because we we are talking about integrating some coffee ground waste as part of our product. So we're not there yet, but we're doing some r&d with that.
So coffee grounds are supposed to be good for the soil.
They can be. So coffee grounds are typically high in pH. On your soil, it can be good or it can be bad if you've got moderate the high pH soil. It's not good. I've got to be good.
Right? I've killed plants with coffee grinds.
Yes. Right?
Yeah. So we don't i don't i don't take the PA obviously go as a season gardener I'm not. But you know, I think like I do think like the world really is your oyster now. So many people caring about reuse and sustainability. And people living in their, you know, more appreciating their homes, for sure that you're really should be at a high trajectory. There's there's a question about do you sell direct to consumer?
We do on our website on picmonkey.com as well as through Amazon, but obviously we prefer people buy from us directly.
Okay. Okay. So, you know, it's interesting. So in this last year, as you've obviously grown and now that we see we're at sort of peak season, you've been able to raise some money.
Right? Yeah. So we have, we've actually had a couple different Angel rounds over the years. We just extended Did our Angel round for accredited investors? I can't talk about that too much here. But if you have accredited investors, they can talk to us. But what really what we've done for the second year in a row now is an equity crowdfunding campaign on Republic. Right? And the reason we did that is because we were on Shark Tank, so many people have wanted to invest, we get that question all the time, like, how can I invest next to the sharks, that sort of thing. So we've always done that less, less to raise money, we're not trying to raise millions of dollars there. And we're really trying to get more and more people aware of the brand using the brand and frankly, being more invested in the brand than actually being invested in the company. That's really what we're trying to do there.
And so the Shark Tank video, the Shark Tank show that you were on, is that still available? Can we share that?
I'm beta don't make it super easy. They share it. We filmed it in 2014. It aired in 2015. And the thing that we see is about every six weeks, it will re air on CNBC. And it so happens it's every time I'm in the gym, I tend to see it. It's on CNBC at the gym, and then I start texting the whole pmra Get ready. We're getting slammed with orders tonight, like that sort of thing.
So there's no way for us to find it.
I there are I think I've seen on YouTubes little clips of it. But I've never seen the whole thing like start to finish. And we're not really allowed to publish anything with it. So
yeah. I'm just trying to think of some ways to get like a little bit of spike for you right now.
Yeah, I think I think if you just YouTube, like Shark Tank, pet moss, like you can see clips of it. Yeah, but I don't think they show like the entire episode.
So refresh everyone. They probably if people didn't know that. I don't agree on Shark Tank, but you got investors.
Yeah, so actually, it was our founder Mont Handley, when he first developed the concept. He went on Shark Tank, he didn't really have the factory, he didn't have any products. But like the magic that he developed is this way to fiber, eyes paper and reconstituted into what I call like little pegs that look like this. And if you think about most paper, when you wet it and compress it, it turns into like a paper mache Shea, right? Well, like his real genius invention was finding a way to fiber eyes, the paper and put it back together in that way that would hold water and aeration. And that's what's patented. So he went on Shark Tank and actually three of the sharks wanted to invest. It's actually kind of funny if you watch the if you watch the episode, blue tree, Allied angels in Pittsburgh had already invested in the sharks ask them Mr. Wonderful, of course, asked him, Hey, would you throw the angels under the bus if you could get an investment for us? And my dad said, Yeah, I would. But the problem was we were already invested. So he did not have enough room. But Robert hersha back, Mr. Wonderful. And Mark Cuban all wanted to invest. So if you watch the show, they make it looked like all three invested, but we didn't have room for all of them. So Mark Cuban ended up taking the deal, because we all know he's a Pittsburgh guy. And he really wanted the Pittsburgh company. So
hey, so does he sit on the board at all? Does? He said no.
Now he has a board observer seat. Huh? Hmm. And he is my most famous Twitter follower, I will say. So I can email him. People ask me all the time for his email. I'm not giving it up. But he's not. He's not super active with the company. It's not like what you see shows, you know, he's got I think over 500 angel investments, right. And he's got an entire firm with handlers that so we actually have a rep that we would work with more than Mark directly.
That's great, too. Jonathan, are there any questions out there? You're on mute.
Here's just a great comment he gave to me. Why didn't Mick Jagger pick Randy Voss up from the airport? Because I'm rolling stone gathers no moss.
Oh my gosh, who said that one?
That is David demais. So yeah.
Well, there's a lot like there's Bob Dylan songs. There's so many songs that I can think of that that talk about MMA. So what, what is the what is the one thing that you want everyone to know here who's listening? You're located in Ambridge, right?
Yep, we're located in Ambridge. So the thing I really want people to take away is how bad Pete is for our environment and for horticulture. We just don't talk about it. Because miracle grows out there, all these people out there, you know selling soil. It's all peat based stuff. We really need to break that soil economy, we have to find a way to do that. I have been pushing super hard. I would love to see Pittsburgh become the clear themselves the first peak free city in America. There's no reason we can't do it. And we keep pushing any pressure we can put on our local officials to be the first peat free city and really kind of tell America that every city can do this. You know, we've we've had some issues with air quality in Pittsburgh. Hey, Mike, what better place to be a leader on that front?
Yeah, that shouldn't be too hard for us to help us right. Doesn't seem like that often.
I it seems like a slam dunk. To me. It
seems like we could do one comment here. Before we end rot. Do you see someone is reaching out?
Yes, this is a good one here. So let me pull my data so I can see it. So this is from Renee coin says great to hear your commitment to greening up the growing in horticultural industry. definitely agree that peat moss is not an ideal solution for sustainability. I would love to connect with you on the Cal ski Center for Sustainable systems and research at Slippery Rock University. It'd be wonderful to partner. And yes, you guys should link up let's get you guys.
Perfect and easy. I just guess brian@picmonkey.com bR Iam either email me
next week. So we're, you know, we want to support you we can be free. Yeah, I don't know enough about what that that entails. But really early. If
you think about it, whether it be for the city or a Free University, I'd love to see Pitt or Duquesne become the first peat free campus. Right.
Well, I think you've just heard from Slippery Rock.
Exactly, exactly.
Start chatter.
There's a bunch of them out there, you know. So really, you we just need to stop using Pete and it doesn't have to be pet moss. It can be compost. There can be other solutions, but there's just no reason for us to use Pete anymore.
So should we do you have like a sticker? That says no, Pete?
We do not. But that sounds like a wonderful idea. We do a lot of pain free.
Yeah. I like that. Free. Yeah. Free Pete use pit moss,
pizza nerdy guy. Exactly.
I love it. I think it's great. So I can't I can't thank you enough. It's always great to catch up with you. Now it's my reminder to buy. As I get ready for my own little planting season. I certainly don't have an urban farm. But I have some plants. And I know that you can see in some of these garden places, the small, small ones, you can see signs up that say that they sell pit moss, and we need to help you make sure that every single one of them buys from you.
Exactly. So much for having me, Adrienne, you know always delivered directly to you if you want Oh,
yeah. I know that. It's great. It's
a neighborhood swing by my house to come. All
right, Jonathan, send me or send me your address. All right, buddy.
Hi, now it's great. People love this company. People are writing great comments. Look, they're going to reach out to you. Someone said reach out to Eaton Hall. People are going to send addresses to you. You have a fan club here. We're very proud of your work. You're working in Ambridge and I guess you're living an average, which is not far from sewickley. Yeah. And Ambridge tends to be a forgotten place. But it's not because you're, you're bringing some life back, back there. And we really appreciate that.
We definitely are. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having us on.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Jonathan. What's next?
Well, tomorrow everyone's got to come back because we have Dr. Capital hanging out with us out of Columbus. They have money companies like Duolingo and Gecko robotics. It's always great to connect people with investors and really what the markets like out there
it's great. Thank you, Ryan. Scott, thank you for everything. We'll see you very soon.
You guys.
Okay, take care. Can you pick up an Ambridge okay? We'll find out Brian Jr. Actually
they do it best in Ambridge sells us for commercial people can come to the factory to pick up.
Okay,
awesome. You got some good. Look at this. Yay. Ambridge great town. It's awesome. Awesome. All right, Brian. Stay safe and Thanks, everyone. Bye.
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