Learning From The Indoor Gardening Trade Show

When I walked into Maximum Yield’s Indoor Gardening trade show, I felt like a rank beginner. Sure, over thirty years in horticulture did help me to understand what was going on in the exploding world of hydroponics. But never before have I seen so many “new” products in one place. What stood out most was the nutrient suppliers who used everything from half naked models to free beer and music to get my attention. I kept recalling that old phrase “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bull#$%^&.”

What I looked for in this sales equation was simplicity and science. Having to use fifteen different bottles of concentrate to feed a crop to maturity is excessive and complicated when you consider the risk of interacting negatively with ordinary substances to wipe out your entire crop. Another company decided that a Humvee and a gold chain on the bag would somehow ensure rap star wealth to any grower that uses their products. Still more are headquartered in Amsterdam and Australia where they naturally pass on the cost of shipping half way around the world to the customer.

And then I came to the delightfully simple Sunshine Advanced booth. There was no smoke and mirrors here, just product samples and two mild mannered members of the staff who know their brand inside and out. They didn’t try to baffle anyone because they don’t have to. Sunshine Advanced has been around long before these other companies were even thought of, and that’s time for proving a truly valuable product. The SA folks emphasize that science is the only real definitive in this market, which is verified by Macro Micro Laboratories to ensure that each of their products is built on hard data.

After lugging a big bag filled with heavy samples of potions from a half dozen nutrient producers, I was relieved to find that Sunshine Advanced didn’t use complexity to prove their products work. With their Plant Fuel offered in just two bottles, one for vegetative phase and one for reproductive phase, any beginner can get it right. Simplicity does by no means eliminate all the goodies added to the other solutions, because if they work, they’re in Fuel. This emerging field where anecdotal information is treated as seriously as the text book basics of plant growth is rife with rip offs. After all, these companies are young, and have not yet made the mistakes and corrected them over years, even decades necessary to prove a viable product in the horticultural world. In fact, many of them may be gone in five year’s time – the industry is just that volatile.

Consider this world of indoor growing products a lot like the dietary supplement industry that is wholly unregulated and littered with bold, but unsubstantiated claims. So rather than investing your money in the latest cure-all priced into the stratosphere, a proven company like Sunshine Advanced will be around tomorrow and next year to stand behind its naturally simple, organically verified and scientifically developed brand.