Today is a big day for Botany as we open the Season Pass to our community for the first time. This is something we’ve been working on for months, and aside from the nitty gritty “how and what” of the Season Pass, I also wanted to share our “why.”
We envision a future where every neighborhood in our city is brimming with life, culture, creativity, and community.
In this future, every storefront is filled with light, love, and laughter and every neighborhood and street corner has its own identity.
The Season Pass is intended as a catalyst to bring about this future by encouraging and rewarding our neighbors, customers, and supporters to intentionally share their love, time, and treasure with local, independent, brick and mortar businesses year-round.
We’re thinking of the Season Pass as a front row ticket to the community we’re proud to call home. It’s a gateway to discover and support the amazing local, independent businesses across our community who value fostering vibrant places as much as we do.
The Season Pass is launching at a time when we’re giving serious thought and consideration to the long-term impact we hope to make through Botany in the years ahead. In this spirit, let’s talk about impact!
A 2024 Season Pass is $90, which provides access to exclusive promotions at sixteen (and counting!) local businesses across South Bend and Mishawaka between April 1 - December 31, 2024. This works out to $10/month. While specific promotions vary from business to business, the most common discount offered is 10%, which means if you can envision spending at least $100/month with any combination of the local businesses on the Season Pass list, you’ll be putting money back in your pocket, a further incentive to choose local businesses whenever possible.
What does it mean for us businesses and our local economy? Since Botany is managing this program, we’re committed to sell no more than 250 passes this year, which will allow us to focus on delivering a quality experience and product in our first year. We don’t want to get carried away because we’ll also be doing a lot of listening and learning in 2024, too.
If we sell-out at 250 passes, that $100/month/household becomes $25,000/mo or $225,000/year reinvested locally from Season Pass holders. Wow. (Of course, I hope we can do even better than that!) I really think and hope we could be on to something here, and it’s a further illustration of how many seemingly small actions can add up to big change.
In many ways, the Season Pass represents both a beginning, middle, and end of different stories. It marks the end of the Botany Backer program, a time of formative learning and growth for Botany. It’s the beginning of a new collaboration model, one built on the foundation of multiplying love and moving with intention where our success as a business is defined by the success of our community. It’s the middle of our story of becoming ourselves - discovering who we’re meant to be and how we’re meant to move through the world. Today, it feels like we’ve moved one step closer to the business we’ve always been meant to be. And that feels really good to me.
Our mission from the beginning of Botany has been to empower more people to grow more plants in more places. The irony, perhaps, is that this work has always been about more than growing plants: it’s also about growing ourselves. You, me, all of us. Together.
To borrow from one of my idols, Erin at Floret:
“I wonder… is legacy only what you achieve or is it also what you help others achieve? I want Floret (and Botany) to empower people to speak their dreams, follow them, and realize them. For too long this industry and frankly this world has been driven by exclusion and the consolidation of power for just a few. I am determined to change that for others.
To me, a dream is like this tiny little tender seedling that has so much potential and possibility but it also has to be protected and cared for until it’s strong enough to get deep roots and be able to handle the weather outside. So when someone has a dream, they’re planting that - they’re speaking it, they’re saying it, they’re declaring it - to me, that act takes so much courage because everything that wants to snuff that out is gonna come for that little dream.
I hope that wherever you may be and whatever you may know or not know about growing things, that you might still give it a try. Put your hands in the dirt. Feel it’s cool touch. Plant a seed. Give it water and sunshine and warmth, and most importantly, give it all the love you have. Wait, and watch what comes up. You will bring something into the world, and no matter what it is, it will be beautiful. And that matters.
Love that. Share that.”
Speaking at least for myself, my journey as an entrepreneur has been about rediscovering myself, my community, and what it means to call a place home. I never intended to open just a plant shop in 2021, but I also didn’t expect owning a business would change me so much. I love that, and I want to share that. I hope we can empower more local, independent businesses to thrive in our area.
If you purchase a Season pass, I hope you discover new places, new people, and new experiences. I hope you find more reasons to be proud to call this place home.
For anyone who owns a business, I hope you’ll find new customers, increase your sales, and get to know your neighbors even better. I hope you feel the love this year. I hope that love helps you to dream bigger and move forward with confidence, courage, magic, and intention.
As I like to say, it takes a village, and I continue to be grateful you’re ours.