The Grow Show keeps growing into Ann Arbor area retail and warehouse space
Alex Lemerand, co-owner of The Grow Show, said his hydroponic garden business is blooming into its 3rd warehouse since the store opened.
Laura Blodgett | For AnnArbor.com
So much so that it just moved into its third warehouse location, as well as a larger retail space in the shopping center at the corner of Stone School and Ellsworth, where it's been housed since it opened in June 2009.
“We just keep needing more space,” says Alex Lemerand, who is co-owner of the store with partner Cayman Hartigan.
Brokered by Neal Warling of Jones Lang Lasalle, the new warehouse in Oxford Commerce Park on Ellsworth near South State is 11,400 square feet with 3,000 square feet of office space. The owners doubled their retail store this summer to 2,600 square feet.
Lemerand previously owned a landscaping company as well as a silk screen tee-shirt business before being injured in a car accident in 2006. During his recuperation, he and Hartigan hatched the idea of a gardening store.
“Being a gardening hobbyist, I found that there were no stores that had the level of service I wanted. So we decided to open our own store,” says Lemerand.
Billing themselves as a full-service horticulture supercenter, The Grow Show lives by its motto “For all your growing needs.”
Offering everything you need to start your own room from bulbs to nutrients, they pride themselves on offering a different line of products with brands like Active Air and Humboldt Nutrients.
“Our distributors such as Hydrofarm serve more of the greenhouse market,” explains Lemerand. “We carry more soils than any other store and more cross breeds of products--where some stores only serve one product to meet a particular need, we bring in everything we find that works.”
Laura Blodgett | For AnnArbor.com
Lemerand himself has tested 70 percent of the items he carries. With several million dollars worth of warehouse stock, this is no mean feat.
“Every product that comes to me I test vigorously. If I like it and it works, I put it directly in the store. I’m always interested in new products.”
He maintains three active grow rooms in his store so customers can see what it takes to set up and maintain various growing methods.
Lemerand says there has been a rush of interest in starting new gardens over the last few years.
“People want to manufacture food for themselves and not rely on other people for production. They don’t want to pay taxes for food or eat pesticide ridden food sent in from other countries," he said. "It is a great savings when you produce it yourself and you enjoy it with the knowledge that you did it yourself.”
Anything goes as far as what kind of garden to choose. “We see everything from small herb production to in-home tubers to vegetables and fruits. I just designed and set up a date tree for a customer that he can put up in his home.”
Systems start as low as $179 and go all the way up to $20,000-$30,000.
“It’s such a vast market with so much potential,” says Lemerand, who prides himself on working with individual customers to meet their particular needs.
“First you decide what you want to cultivate, whether it’s orchids or vegetables or something else, and then we will tailor a system around that.”
Lemerand reaches a national audience through his website sales, although store sales are still larger at this point. On average, the store is turning 78 sales a day with roughly 150-200 people visiting daily.
“We never envisioned sales to be this good,” says Lemerand. “It far exceeds the projected income from our initial business plan.”
Lemerand says they'll help any customer grow anything allowed by law. He attributes their success to exceptional customer service, including their in-store warranty policy.
“If any item breaks during the warranty period, we just turn around and hand you a new one right off the shelf. Most stores have to take the broken piece and mail it out and wait for a new one to be shipped to them. This is immediate satisfaction for the customer.”
The Grow Show has seven employees and is looking to hire two more people.
Comments
Deborah
Fri, Dec 24, 2010 : 3:40 p.m.
Growing indoors makes even more sense when one is able to connect the lights to a solar/wind source which is our goal for 2011. CEA gives you the power to feed, clothe and cure yourself and Cannabis as one of the four pillars of agricultural society belongs in any grow indoor or out. Cannabis Cures Cannabis Feeds Cannabis Clothes and we outlawed it? only Jesus did more. Kill the Drug War and end the longest most profitable scam in human history. Religion is in a class of its own for the longest running profitable scam...
Diane
Wed, Oct 20, 2010 : 5:40 p.m.
This store is awesome. The staff is wondeful. I havent received customer service like this in over 20 years. Everything they explained to me worked perfect for my indoor garden. My tomatos are so perfect my neighbors want to start there own indoor garden. I will tell everyone about The Grow Show.
Kevin
Tue, Oct 12, 2010 : 8:53 a.m.
They have a great store and the employees are very helpful. I saw the initial opening and there are many, many reasons to use hydroponic systems for food use. I've had three types of basil and two types of thyme growing in a hydroponic system and it's supplied me for well over a year. I generally use clean or rain water that I've been using for other purposes to top off the water. The only reason they died was that I forgot to add water for a month. But any normal plant will die without water, so that's my fault. It's a great way to grow in our semi to urban environment, especially avoiding the mess with dirt, and using some of the natural sunlight from a window. There's at least one pizza place in Ann arbor that has a hydroponic system running in their resturant where they're growing rows upon rows of basil, which are used in the creation of their pizzas. Many farmers in the area use hydroponics for their tomatoes and lettuce in this area too. Just look at the local farmers markets and you just might see the telltale rockwool block. Of course NASA's using hydroponics as well, or at least testing using low energy led lights and a closed water system, and I don't think that they're growing anything illegal. Not unless they'd want their funding pulled. I'm glad that they're doing well, especially in these past few years when people were worried about small stores.
Cassy
Tue, Oct 12, 2010 : 1:24 a.m.
Marijuana is NOT the only nor even the largest crop of hydroponic growers. The largest commercial hydroponics facility in the world is Eurofresh Farms in Willcox, Arizona, which sold 200 million kilograms of tomatoes in 2008. Eurofresh has 318 hectares under glass and represents about a third of the commercial hydroponic greenhouse area in the U.S. Eurofresh does not consider its tomatoes organic, but they are pesticide-free. They are grown in rockwool using the run to waste technique. Hydroponics also saves water; it uses as little as 120 the amount as a regular farm to produce the same amount of food. The water table can be impacted by the water use and run-off of chemicals from farms, but hydroponics may minimize impact as well as having the advantage that water use and water returns are easier to measure. This can save the farmer money by allowing reduced water use and the ability to measure consequences to the land around a farm. The environment in a hydroponics greenhouse is tightly controlled for maximum efficiency and this new mindset is called soil-less/controlled-environment agriculture (CEA). With this growers can make ultra-premium foods anywhere in the world, regardless of temperature and growing seasons. Growers monitor the temperature, humidity, and pH level constantly. Hydroponics have been used to enhance vegetables to provide more nutritional value. A hydroponic farmer in Virginia has developed a calcium and potassium enriched head of lettuce, scheduled to be widely available in April 2007. Grocers in test markets have said that the lettuce sells "very well", and the farmers claim that their hydroponic lettuce uses 90% less water than traditional soil farming. Controlled environment agriculture is the wave of the future in farming food.
treetowncartel
Mon, Oct 11, 2010 : 10:33 p.m.
@ Shadow Manager, do you mean most people with respect to the over all population, or those so inclined?
ShadowManager
Mon, Oct 11, 2010 : 9:46 p.m.
I think its shameful you don't even mention in the article that main reason these stores are "sprouting" up and growing...despite the owner's "stress" that they don't support anything illegal...is because most people use indoor lights and hydroponics to grow marijuana.
Cassy
Mon, Oct 11, 2010 : 2:16 p.m.
I read the story and didn't once think of marijuana or cannabis. I thought it was terrific that a couple of young men found a niche in Michigan business and are thriving in a poor economy. They, themselves, are doing absolutely nothing illegal and if they can thrive and make money in today's business environment more power to them! Congratulations Misters Lemerand and Hartigan!
Paula Gardner
Mon, Oct 11, 2010 : 1:16 p.m.
The owners of the store stressed to the reporter that they help customers cultivate anything allowed by law. Because of that, and the political aspects of the state's medical marijuana law, they would not discuss it further. We found this story due to the expansion of the warehouse and decided that it still was worth reporting.
Chase Ingersoll
Mon, Oct 11, 2010 : 11:18 a.m.
Laura Blodgett: How can you expect anyone to read this story and not notice that never appears the word "marijuana" or "cannabis"? Seriously, the obvious not asked question for this story, is: what percentage of the sales are for the cultivation of _ _ _ _ _ _? Followed by: and how do you feel about doing your part to put the Mexican drug cartels out of business from right here in Michigan? Okay, I've asked them now. Any responses?