A 158-year-old lawn company says it’s a lifestyle brand now
ScottsMiracle-Gro is 158 years old and its new CEO says it is now a lifestyle company. Nate Baxter got smirks when he said it internally, and he tells Brian Sozzi why he means it: the company wants to talk about the backyard, not the bag.
Underneath the rebrand is an admission. Scotts invented four-step lawn feeding in the 1940s, then sold everyone one bag that does three jobs. “In many ways it’s our fault,” Baxter says, and he is pushing a cheaper single-purpose lawn food used four times a year instead.
He also names the debt load he says is holding the stock back, five weeks into the job after Jim Hagedorn’s near-40-year run.
Timestamps
0:26 The question his own scientists answer differently than you do
1:09 How the CEO of a lawn company actually treats his lawn
1:47 If you only feed once a year, do it in the fall
2:10 The soil health problem nobody in the industry talks about
3:17 Why a home soil test still takes six weeks
3:59 He rebuilt his own lawn from seed and barely uses weed killer
4:44 Scotts invented four-step feeding in the 1940s, then abandoned it
5:16 “In many ways it’s our fault”
5:56 Which all-in-one products get de-emphasised, and which survive
6:18 A 25 dollar bag, and the higher-frequency-lower-price strategy
7:26 A tale of two consumers, and the one they cannot yet describe
8:00 Om Scott, paper bags and native grass seed
9:00 Why he calls paying homeowners to install fake turf criminal
9:57 Founded in 1868, and the hardware store they still own
10:25 Reinventing every day, and the move toward biologicals
11:42 SMG 2.0, and the question he posed internally two years ago
12:51 His sister’s backyard, and how “lifestyle company” stopped being a joke
13:52 Selling Hawthorne and leaving the cannabis business
14:45 From tech to CEO: “you guys don’t know it yet, but we’re a technology company”
15:50 Why he does not want a headline about an AI bet
16:59 Never shipping a bag of dirt more than 150 miles
19:07 Whether there is any real innovation left in this category
21:08 What sustainability actually looks like in plastic bags
22:31 The endless shelf, ship-in-own-package, and taking the water out
23:30 Launching products digitally so a flop does not become inventory
24:41 The leverage he says is holding the stock back
#ScottsMiracleGro #lawncare #CPG #stocks #PowerPlayers #YahooFinance
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