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Who’s Steering Hawthorne? The Mysterious Buyout of Scotts’ Hydroponics Empire · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there, welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  Today's episode is all about hawthorn horticulture and an interesting,
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  mysterious development in this interesting story about American hydroponics and business.
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  So if you don't know hawthorn horticulture, they are a famous,
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  almost infamous company that was set up by scott's scott's
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  miracle grow so they're one of the biggest fertilizer and pesticide
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  companies in the world and they focus on
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  home and lawn fertilizers and
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  pesticides and they're massive they're
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  based in ohio and they're owned by
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  a family well they're a publicly traded company
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  but they they're owned by
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  let me just get the name of the haggardorn family and they set up around about
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  15 years ago a subsidiary to focus on legal cannabis and hemp growing so the
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  haggardorns is it's a german surname as lots of people in.
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  Ohio are from German descent, the Hagedorns. And Hagedorn actually means hawthorn in German.
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  So they translated it into hawthorn horticulture.
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  So it's still connected to Scots in some way, but it was separate because they
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  realized that their investors on Wall Street would get jittery if Scots'.
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  Miracle growth started pushing hard into cannabis.
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  And they used their weight and their massive purchasing
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  power to quickly purchase companies
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  that were already established in the cannabis sector the legal
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  cannabis sector and so they could buy into
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  ready-made sales into a booming market
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  and this increased their their revenue and their
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  their growth more importantly their growth figures so
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  they invested a lot of money and this was the strategy acquisitions were
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  the strategy growth via acquisitions was a
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  strategy and it seemed to be working very well especially during lockdown
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  where they looked like miracle workers where
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  this was booming states were legalizing a
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  rapid rate and people had time on their hands
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  and so hydroponics was booming and hawthorne horticulture
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  was booming however it wasn't without naysayers in
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  the legal cannabis sector there was lots of controversy because
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  scots are famous for selling roundup
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  which is glyphosate and glyphosate has been linked to
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  a number of cancers and so monsanto obviously gm crops as well they're famous
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  for and they make roundup and so and then there was a rumor that hawthorne and
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  scots was owned by monsanto this is not true there's no information out there on
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  that says that they're owned they simply just sell what was Monsanto products
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  Monsanto have now themselves been bought out.
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  Is it Bayer? Yes, it was Bayer and rather stupid acquisition because Monsanto,
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  a lot of dirt comes with Monsanto.
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  And so you have not a lot of legal claims and things like this.
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  So you really are buying a big sack of crap when you borrow Monsanto.
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  I don't know what they were thinking, but yeah. So then Scots, they purchase a lot of.
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  And they sell a lot of those products for use in home and gardens and so
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  many in the cannabis sector didn't didn't like
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  that a lot of false rumors about scots as
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  well for me it's not the links to roundup i
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  think probably the worst product that month that there's two
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  products i think scots are terrible at selling one
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  is controlled release fertilizers these are the plastic little
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  balls that just sit around in your soil for decades never decompose
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  or take decades take centuries to decompose and
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  the other one is ready to use fertilizer diluted fertilizer
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  just waste plastic packaging so it'd be
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  great if scots could stop selling those ridiculously bad for the environment
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  products i would say they're more important to get
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  rid of than glyphosate and there's an immediate effect however
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  back to the subject in hand hawthorn horticulture they bought
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  some really big established brands and
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  that caused waves in the legal cannabis sector
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  these brands were well givita was
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  a massive lighting brand and can filters
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  you will have heard of botanicare probably
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  the biggest is general hydroponics famous for
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  their three-part fertilizer really big range of
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  products you can apply if you use general hydroponics really
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  established lots of old cannabis from back in the days when it wasn't legal
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  people worked for them so they were really buying into the community as it were
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  they're trying to buy kudos vermicrop organics hurricane titan controls mother earth these are all.
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  Brands that were purchased by Hawthorne and part of their line-up.
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  Gavita, Stinson stopped selling in Europe and I know Hawthorne at one point
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  after lockdown, where everything started to shrink again. They... they...
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  Didn't sell off their lights cheaply they
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  just disposed of them and an extremely high
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  amount of of lights with an extremely high
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  street value for led lights and that was a real shame and yeah be interesting
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  to know how they were disposed of so that was interesting the gavita was a massive
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  brand here in the uk as well botanic air and general hydroponics not so much and And Botanicare,
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  they try to launch through HydroGarden here in the UK.
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  Botanicare have got some really good products. And I was just surprised at the
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  lineup they chose to launch here in the UK.
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  They tended to launch the products that were like flavor products.
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  And I would have chosen other products in the Botanicare range that were unique.
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  But that's a matter for a different day.
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  General Hydeaponics have since, I think their European arm has changed name as well.
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  But Hawthorne Horticulture continues on and did continue on.
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  They bought some retail or distribution companies as well to sort of control
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  more of the supply chain to get a tighter grip on that.
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  And the family that runs the Hawthorne were very aggressive in their strategy, the Hagedorns.
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  And so that was this strategy, trying to get into large big box stores as well,
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  things like Home Depot, where they had already got established distribution
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  through the Miracle-Gro and Scots range.
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  But here comes the really interesting bit, because I mean the strange,
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  curious case of Hawthorne, because after COVID and lockdown,
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  there was obviously a massive slump in hydroponics.
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  Now, what do you do if you're a large company like Scott's Miracle-Gro and Hawthorne?
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  They've got the money to weather the storm, but it's affecting your balance sheet.
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  It's affecting your growth figures and your investors are not happy.
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  They can't see federal legalization of cannabis anytime soon.
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  And so if they're even
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  though they're pressing and lobbying donald trump
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  and other the democrats as well at the
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  same time to legalize it on a federal level they're not being
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  very successful donald trump's got other fish to
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  fly fry and so what they've decided to do is push off hawthorn horticulture
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  off their their balance sheets so they've got nothing to do with it and so they've
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  tried to what they've done though is what's curious so if you look at it they've not sold it.
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  They've put it in the hands of an independent strategic partner they've transferred
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  the cannabis focus subsidiary away from scotch miracle not sold it nowhere does
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  it say it's been sold but they're looking to sell it but the problem is the
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  people there's no information about who's going to be buying it but they are
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  so that they're going to sell it.
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  A company of Hawthorne size is probably have to be bought by another publicly traded company.
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  And if a publicly traded company is going to buy Hawthorne Horticulture or Hawthorne
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  Collective, as it's now known, then it would need to be declared to the stock
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  market and they would, it would need to be public knowledge.
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  So who is purchasing Hawthorne Collective?
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  Who is running hawthorn horticulture one
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  of the biggest brands in hydroponics nobody
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  knows who is running it and that
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  i think is really really interesting and
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  i think some journalists should have a look into it because
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  there's no information out there about who runs hawthorn
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  horticulture who is at the wheel of gavita general
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  hydroponics botanica can filters things
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  like that so there's a conundrum for you really
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  interesting juicy story that should run and run so
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  we've already had the issue of
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  where the the Hawthorne lights were being
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  sued the the Osram people were
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  suing the the people using the Hawthorne lights potential users
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  so and threatening to take growers to
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  court and this is another spicy aspect of
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  that whole story and sort of interplays with it venn
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  diagram overlaps who you know will farmers
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  be sued for using gavita lights
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  and will and who hell
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  runs hawthorne horticulture thank you
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  very much for listening some of that was pure drivel but if you did find it
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  useful or interesting could you do me a massive massive massive favor and leave
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  a review specifically on apple podcasts even if you're not using apple podcast
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  because I'm trying to get up the charts and trying to get a hydroponics podcast.
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  In the top 10 for home and garden.
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  I think that would be a really big achievement, especially during the summer.
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  And also I've put ourselves forward for a Gardening Media Guild Award for podcast of the year.
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  And I think being up the chart will give us a good chance of winning that.
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  So yeah, be able to go to London and wear a tuxedo and collect an award if you can do that.
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  So that would be really interesting. so get onto
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  apple podcasts click follow on apple podcasts and that
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  and leave a five-star written review or a
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  four-star whatever you want to leave but that will shoot us up
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  the apple podcast charts which will be fantastic i've
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  got some really interesting podcast episodes lined up
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  for monday and tuesday this week don't know what i'm going to do tomorrow but
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  i'll bring me a great monday and tuesday again monday and tuesday because i've
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  got to do some videos as well on youtube one of them is going to be on all about
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  growing crops on mars and the other one's going to be on use of vibration plates
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  which i think should be interesting okay until then thank you very much for listening and goodbye.