Bloomscape founder Justin Mast on shipping living things and why it acquired a plant care app

Some DTC founders pick a sector just because they spy an opportunity. Bloomscape founder Justin Mast said did that too with his direct-to-consumer plant company, Bloomscape, that he founded in 2018. But he had a bit of a leg up, as he's also a fifth-generation greenhouse grower. His parents met in a greenhouse, in fact. Bloomscape ships thousands of plants a week, including full-grown ones that only survive within a narrow set of conditions. "The thing we did differently was to say 'how do we do this for a six foot tall tropical plant?'" Mast said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "I want to be able to ship that to Boston in the dead of winter." Bloomscape ships even the most fragile of plants through an advanced system of storage in greenhouses, and through innovative shipping patents and soil mixes. The company has seen year over year growth, as well as a huge spike in demand over the last few months. This week, in fact, the company announced that it raised a $15 million Series B, and acquired the plant care app Vera. Mast said the app acquisition is a way to keep more customers invested in the vegetation they purchase. Mast sees the pandemic as an accelerant for the millennial generation's belated settling down. "We're now settling into our lives, starting to settle down into homes and get a little more inward with our lives," Mast said.