You might recall me mentioning that back in September during National Indoor Plant Week, the team at the consumer-facing mobile app GrowIt! opened up a weeklong survey to its users all about houseplants. It wasn’t a survey to sneeze at either! They gathered more than 10,000 responses! They partnered with the folks at the Tropical Plant International Expo (TPIE), the survey’s underwriter, to release this survey data and make it available to everyone in the industry (Thanks, TPIE!).

Said TPIE Show Manager Linda Adams of the survey, “Having consumer data specific to indoor plants is a welcome resource to our industry. From an insider's perspective, we've always known the value of houseplants and promoted them based on their beauty and benefits, yet learning the specific plant-related preferences and concerns of houseplant buyers will help everyone serve the consumer better and sell more plants."

As I said, the data is available for everyone to read, analyze, strategize and implement. You can find the survey results HERE. What’s really cool about it is the folks at GrowIt! have added their insights and opinions on actions you can take—find those throughout the survey listed as GrowIt! Suggestions.

Here’s an example of the responses to one survey question, “When picking out a houseplant, what’s the number one thing you look for?”

If you can’t read the choice options listed on the bottom, the top answer is “vibrant colors/foliage,” followed by “healthy/bug-disease free” and “uniqueness/rarity.” What other gems will you find in this survey?   

You can dive into the info in the GrowIt! survey and other insights, ideas and inspirations—and the suppliers/vendors that can help make it happen—at TPIE, taking place in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, January 22-24.

In the next Tropical Topics, I’ll go over a few insider details about the keynotes to make your trip there even more of a must-do business trip. Visit tpie.org for more info and to make your travel plants ... I mean, plans.

NICH, the National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture, released another infographic in its #PlantsDoThat campaign. And it’s one right up our alley, too, as folks growing and selling indoor plants.

Sure, this research nugget is a nice consumer-facing bit of info that anyone selling plants should promote on garden center websites and e-blasts, all the socials, online ordering tools, etc. And I would argue it’s just the kick in the tush we need as an industry to promote the power of plants to corporate workplaces.

Plants aren’t just for Millennials and Gen Zers, nor the fancy houseplant collector crowd, either. Indoor plants work hard for white-collar workers, too. If you have ideas of how to increase indoor plants in office spaces via promotional strategies (in addition to using this graphic), drop me a NOTE about it and I’ll share your ideas.

I signed up to receive a monthly “What’s Trending?” e-newsletter from Pinterest. Some months it’s chock full of totally relevant info. Some months—meh, nothing.

I was about to trash this month’s hot tips when I dove a little deeper. The words “foyer decorating” caught my eye. (Compared to “colored wing eyeliner” and “fall finger food ideas,” foyers are way more relevant to us.)

And look at this!

There are houseplants in nearly all of the photos under the search term “small foyer decorating,” a term up 707% YoY. The search term “floating shelf entryway” is up 202% YoY, by the way. Check out the hits from that term HERE. Nearly all of those images include plants, too. Again, use these ideas and images in your marketing campaigns  

I’ve been holding this news in my inbox so long it’s now old. It’s the story about how Orbitz partnered with Chicago hotel Kimpton Gray to provide “pop-up” plant-centric rooms. Outfitted with the Millennial generation in mind, a few rooms in the hotel were lush with ferns, philodendrons and other greenery. One room even had more of a desert vibe. This pop-up experience was available October 18-19 and the rooms were available exclusively through Orbitz at www.orbitz.com/plantpopup.

The plant theme was inspired by the plethora of information out there about how Millennials love houseplants. But it was thematically inspired by Chicago’s Garfield Park Conservatory. Folks booked in the plant-themed rooms also received tickets to the conservatory’s plant- and flower-themed fashion event, Fleurotica. Read the Chicago Tribune article about the Orbitz pop-up HERE.

Since this is old (but good) info, what new spin could I put on this plant-themed pop-up? Have you heard about Airbnb’s Experiences? If an Airbnb host has an expertise in something—maybe cooking or baking, maybe hiking locally, maybe they own a farm, etc.—that expertise could be offered (with an added charge) to guests as part of an “experience.” Maybe Airbnb houseplant experiences could become a thing. As Orbitz showed, it’s just crazy enough to work.