Botanical Boys: It’s Always Greener On The Other Side
Botanical Boys are one of the success stories on the King’s Cross development. The beloved store has humble beginnings having started around a dining table in the founders’ flat where he and his business partner would educate people about plants. It became an intricate part of their lifestyle, who they are, and later on a business. These transitions have helped Botanical Boys to grow and keeps their venture fresh.
Darren Henderson, Director, and Owner of Botanical Boys talked to us about his journey as a business owner, adaptability in the face of a pandemic, and KX Recruit.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Botanical Boys they “provide indoor plants and botanical experiences by connecting people to nature” as nicely put by Darren himself.
Before Botanical Boys propelled into the limelight
In a previous life, not so long ago, Darren was an IT Project Manager but his garden lead him on an unexpected journey, as Darren explains “I had a Japanese garden in East London during the National Gardening Scheme which was a voluntary thing I’d do every year. It gave me the inspiration for plants, and I started to plant up my desk”.
Demonstrating how the hobby developed into something more he says “I got people involved; I launched my own experience programme on Airbnb to teach people how to put terrariums together. I quit my old job last year because things started to get busy, but it placed something interesting in my life, so I decided to do Botanical Boys full time”.
Just like the plants that Botanical Boys supply, their business continues to grow with Darren stating “On average we taught 300 people a month before lockdown, and that is mostly terrarium garden design – it’s how we connect people to nature while they’re in their flats and at home. It’s especially useful for those who have no outdoor space because they don’t normally have access to plants. That’s predominantly what we do. As a shop, we have lots of different collectibles, artifacts, African pieces, plants, and really interesting pots – but we also provide education to people. We’re slightly different to your standard plant shop in that way.”
Hobby into a passion, passion into a business
A lot of people contemplate a career change at some point in their lives. According to career change statistics, the average person will change careers 5-7 times during their working life.
Darren’s advice to those who are interested in a career change is to “test it first to see if it’s something you really want to do. If it becomes a second job and you can make some money out of it that’s great but first and foremost your motive should not be for monetary gain initially. If you feel passionate about it and love what you’re doing on the side, it will eventually become something that may end up taking over your full-time job”.
As a true believer of not rushing the process, Darren says “take your time, get on that train, get off at different stations and check everything before you get to your final destination. Grow your business organically. You can have a plan, but plans don’t always work out so take each day as it comes. Business changes, you must adapt to enhance your brand. Be patient and enthusiastic.”
The future is green
Botanical Boys have many plans for the future “In the short term, the main focus is just trying to survive like everyone else is and keep on top of the brand. We’re here, we’ve still got a visual presence, and we’ve used the time gained from the lockdown period and pandemic to our benefit by looking at different products and enhancing our experience, and range. This has given us a good opportunity in the short term to look at new products to help people solve their plant problems at home.”
Thinking even further into the future Darren explains his vision “In the long-term, I see us with a bigger store. We don’t want to franchise but we’d love to double the size of our shop over the next 5 years and double the size of our events. We’d like to be doing 500+ workshop events per month and increase interest in interior botanical natural design products. It’s an exciting challenge but it doesn’t come without its risks of course”.
Utilising social media during lockdown
Social media is as important as ever and is a great tool to utilise when being physically open isn’t possible. Darren used social media to tap into his market, celebrating his triumph he recalls “we recently reached 13.4k followers on Instagram! It’s increased because we use online competitions to gain interest in our products. We started doing our courses online and launched that during the first week of lockdown, my business partner and myself worked very hard to get that up and running and that was a huge challenge in terms of packaging, shipping, courier services, and everything”.
Explaining how he adapted Darren says “we had to look at a lot of variables very quickly. We launched our online service, which is doing well, the numbers aren’t as big as I hoped but that’s because everyone else is also online, so it slightly narrows our margin. But it’s been a great opportunity and challenge, it has helped us to reach people as far as Scotland and gain interest from abroad. We’ve never done that before, that’s a huge positive we’ve taken away from Covid-19 as it has allowed us to look at different avenues. Online has become a part of our belt which it wasn’t before and hopefully, that will grow in succession with the face to face”.
Positivity during Covid-19
“Even though the numbers are slightly lower on our side, we’re quite positive about what we’ve achieved. I’ve learnt a lot about another side of our business, and we’ve learnt a lot from that and we”
How did you find out about KX Recruit
“I found out about KX Recruit through Argent who mentioned that there’s a free recruitment service available in one of the initial retail meetings.”.
How has our service made an impact on your business?
“You helped us out a lot and took a lot of strain away from me having to use another recruitment company. I didn’t have a lot of time to look around, at the time when we were growing very strongly with events, we needed people to help pack and teach. You found candidates for me to interview and a space to conduct the interview in. You took a lot of pressure off us – I gave you the job description, and you went away and found us the candidates and we picked a few good ones. We were able to get some freelance stuff through that. I can’t complain you’ve been fantastic”.
Experience with KXR
“Positive, welcoming, helpful. From a business point of view: stress-free and economical as there are no fees at the moment. Really positive, we’ll tap into you again in the future”.
Would you use us again?
“Yes, definitely”
What was the most memorable thing about KXR?
“The positive attitudes. We had several events coming up, I had a short period of time to train someone – it was two weeks and you guys were able to turn it around very quickly and get me several candidates in a short space of time. Far too many for me to interview, but it gave me options and people in the net which I really liked. It really took the pressure off because you arranged a suitable interview window. I had a lot to juggle I was running the shop, we’re a young company, and organising events with corporate and local clients so I had no time to recruit myself and you really gave me a stress-free service”.
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