mangosteen seedling business partnership?

[tru]

Hey everyone, I'm Truman, I'm 22, I'm an actuary, but I really want to make a living doing something in the fruit world.

I love garcinias, but prices online are insane! I'm looking to start a business that focuses on only garcinia seedlings; I love watching them grow.
Would anyone like to partner up with me as a seed supplier? I'd heavily prefer to focus on only garcinias to maintain best growing conditions and specialize in what we offer

Here's how I envision this business model works:
- You supply seeds
- I supply water, electricity, soil, pots, boxes, labels
- I maintain the online shop/customer questions/orders
- We split the profits

If this sounds appealing to you please PM! If you have any questions about who I am, where I'm located, pics of the setup, my past experience with ecommerce or marketing, any questions or concerns etc. just let me know! Or text me with your username 214-663-4410. Let's grow some plants 🤝

edit: if anyone is on the fence please consider it 

[K-Rimes]

Seeds come up pretty often, just buy them en masse when available. As someone who has done business partnerships, I cannot recommend them. Someone is going to do all the work, and that's going to be you if you're the one seeding, growing, potting, shipping etc.

[tru]

While I agree that it's a lot of work, I grew up with a single mom as a small business owner that led to me doing all this packing and website commerce stuff to help so I'm not really phased on that end of it,

+ I figure if someone runs into something rare they can get more knowing they can ship me some and make their money back, really I'm doing it for the love of the plants at the end of the day. If I had capital to spend on seeds like that I probably would but it's just not an option for me right now, especially with some of the rarer stuff at the scale I'd like

If you ever decide you wanna be on the other side of your past partnership, I can always find more space : ) Cheers!

[NateTheGreat]

Your partnership sounds pretty unfair, since you'd be doing all of the work and shouldering basically all the expenses. If you maintain accurate expense records, you probably won't turn a real profit for years, especially if you put a dollar value on your labor hours for watering etc. On the other side of the partnership, there's a big risk your venture fails before you ever sell anything. Say I sent you $250 to get started with seeds, what's to say I ever get anything back from you? Given the chance of zero returns, your partner has to expect some juicy returns should things go well, which would probably mean you get screwed over on your labor and expenses. My advice is to not include partners. Instead of starting with 100 seedlings, start with 50, as your funding allows.

[tru]

I’m exchanging money for access; What I lose in profit I make up for in variety! Rare plants never stay on the shelf for long — I know we’ve all seen that first hand

I’m offering my growing space as a vantage point between where the hard to source seed is and any US buyer. It might seem unfair if I were just jumping into the e-commerce side of things, but this is by no means my first time. www.hapajoesnursery.com if you want an example of my work : ), revised from ground up in ~48 hours

Sure I might not be putting enough value on myself, but I think it’s worth it to get this off the ground, I think trust plays a bit of a factor in some of the points about profit returns because I look at it as worst case scenario I ship you back a bunch of plants that you can sell yourself. Reputation is huge and Id be throwing mine away forever by telling y’all my legal name, address, and then scamming you 😭🤣

[hammer524]

Do you have a greenhouse? I have lost a lot of seedlings and rare seeds due to the weather or myself. After a few years of building up like Nate said, I am now building a greenhouse.  Highly suggest you have a greenhouse before you take on any venture like this. We don't live in Florida/ San Diego/ Hawaii.

[tru]

10x10 greenhouse with heater but no humidity controls (still humid as all hell though) and 2 tents inside

I feel like y’all’s business plans want to take advantage of the profits from growing them out for years, in my mind not a single plant sold would be over 6 months or so old, more customers and faster turnaround

[Jaboticaba45]

Sounds like a cool plan. Curious on why you chose garcinias? Mangosteen in particular.

[tru]

I feel like they have the greatest variance in growth for good vs. bad conditions, a mangosteen in a perfect environment just grows so ridiculously fast compared to without the humidity that my hunch is mangosteens would be the most 'worth' the time spent, but really I have no clue and just love how garcinias grow. Luc's Garcinia was the first fruit to get me into this whole hobby! (besides lychees but those aren't exactly rare)

I cranked my humidity to full blast and 7 out of 8 garcinias threw a new leaf the next day, and I don't know in that moment I just got really inspired

[waldi1]

Hi Truman, got your massage on coming to visit Mexico
I´m in Zihuatanejo -Ixtapa, not very far from were you will be .
Have 2ha of Tropical fruit trees mostly starting flowering now
Also have contact to Mangosteeen  sellers
If you are interested ,tell me when.
Helmut

[tru]

WOW! I made that exact drive from morelia to ixtapa as an 8 year old in a convertible with the roof down the whole time. Remember it like it was yesterday. First and only time I've ever been out of the country, and its been so long that I don't even count it. It was also the first time I'd seen a waterspout too, We took a boat ride to an island off the beach and I picked up coral that had washed up and took it back to my class for show and tell and gave them all a piece. Bet I still have the coral somewhere in my nightstand. Wow.

Thank you so much for the message Helmut. When the time comes I'd love to visit again! 4 hours or so right? Not bad at all! Bunch of cliffs along the drive though if memory serves me! haha

[waldi1]

Its more about 2 hrs.
can take a comfotable Bus ride and maybe stay for one or two days nearby in a cheep hotel.
I guess it will be a big surprise to see the changes.
Saludos
Helmut

[VOLANT007]

I feel like they have the greatest variance in growth for good vs. bad conditions, a mangosteen in a perfect environment just grows so ridiculously fast compared to without the humidity that my hunch is mangosteens would be the most 'worth' the time spent, but really I have no clue and just love how garcinias grow. Luc's Garcinia was the first fruit to get me into this whole hobby! (besides lychees but those aren't exactly rare)

I cranked my humidity to full blast and 7 out of 8 garcinias threw a new leaf the next day, and I don't know in that moment I just got really inspired

Mangosteens grow fast?  That has not been my experience.  Granted I don't live where they are commonly grown but im in Florida and we get decent humidity here.  I have about a dozen seedlings and have experienced the moments when they all seem to flush out at the same time, which does feel great   I personally think it was highly coincidental that this happened when you cranked the humidity up but I could be wrong.  My understanding is they speed up as they get older but young seedlings are notoriously know to grow slow.  Can someone else chime in on this that lives where they are typically cultivated?  Kudos for wanting to get this business going, i wish you success.  And yes, there is something interesting/cool about mangosteens....garcinias in general are such interesting plants.

[tru]

If you can find a way to keep your humidity up overnight and not give them too much light I think you'll have better results!

There's a paper from india that discovered mangosteens grow best at -constant- 85-95% humidity and 600 PPFD. (600ppfd is like 1/5th the power of a full sun day in the tropics, honestly I bet mangosteens would make great indoor full sun houseplants even). Granted these are for purple mangosteen specifically, but something to consider

also yeah don't get me wrong mangosteens sure are slow growers, but I feel like they're one of the most efficient plants to benefit from an optimized setup

[Bush2Beach]

1 thing, Who is buying Mangosteen seedlings?
Nowhere in the US.

[tru]

Maybe the sellers are marketing them wrong

But seriously I see great potential as mangosteens becoming something like a monstera, calathea, prayer plant, rubber tree, and all the other houseplants that you really shouldn't be growing inside but people just do anyway, plus they're tanks you can overwater them, underwater them, leaves are safe for people, dogs, cats could get stomach troubles from them but nothing like a lily, plus most leaves are super thick and they'd really need to be determined to eat it

I get what you're saying but I guess I'm holding onto hope that something similar can happen like 3 years ago when no one had heard of a monstera, and now they're all over the place. Or I can try at least 

As far as niches go, I can't really think of plants with new growth as beautiful as jaboticabas, mangosteens, or syzygium. Like take a cuban mangosteen for example with its bright blood-red new leaves or wax jambu dark purple. Imbe would also be a great houseplant I think

[Bush2Beach]

Those houseplants are all houseplants for a reason, they are relatively easy to keep alive.
Mangosteen houseplant sales does not sound like booming business.
Find the next hype thing... you said it  miracle berry's were hype , Monstera's were hype , then Jabo, now Yumberry's. So what is next?
who knows? something variegated always sells
I just saying there is no market in the US for mangosteen plants.

[Epiphyte]

tru, one thing that might be causing a bit of confusion is that you're using the word "mangosteen" to refer to all garcinias.  i've seen maybe a few others do the same thing, such as "yellow mangosteen", but generally the word "mangosteen" is used to refer specifically to Garcinia mangostana.  for example, personally i don't have a mangosteen but i do have several garcinias.  a few duplicates are inside the house and they aren't the happiest.  right next to them is a rollinia deliciosa that has been growing non-stop.

[tru]

Epiphyte yeah I just have a bad habit of saying mangosteen instead of garcinia because there's so many common names with mangosteen in it i.e. cuban, mexican, purple, yellow but yeah I just mean garcinias in general because they all seem to lend themselves well to low light and high humidity

and B2B I get that! But I'm saying maybe I could make one : ) or die trying haha

[Bush2Beach]

I'd hope it would be a successful venture for you.
Vanilla vine makes a nice houseplant too.

[JohnNichols71]

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[AlinHobbs]

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