CropKing Pres. Paul Brentlinger On Ag’s Undervalued Human Element
All images courtesy of CropKing and Paul Brentlinger
Dan Brentlinger, the late founder of CropKing, knew he wanted to be an indoor grower as early as a sixth grade when he wrote an essay about his dream of pursuing horticulture. By that time, he was already growing strawberries in his basement. It took years for the industry to catch up to his ambitions. He founded CropKing because he felt other indoor operators were offering poor products with even worse support for growers. Now, Paul, his son, is at the reigns, and we chatted about financing tips, the ag data revolution, and how the human element of agriculture is more vital than ever.
What is the biggest challenge in indoor ag right now, compared to when CropKing got started?
You fast forward 35 years [from the founding of CropKing] and the bigger challenge isn’t that nobody understands what hydroponics is, or what the benefits of controlled environment agriculture are, or why our food system isn’t working in its current state.
Now the bigger question is, how do you weed through all the garbage? As any industry matures, you’ve got the guys like CropKing or AmHydro, who have been around for almost 40 years. You don’t make it for 40 years if you’re not providing good products and good support. But now that CEA and hydroponics are somewhat mainstream, you’ve got everybody and their brother claiming to be experts and to have packages and tech support and quality supplies.
In the age of social media and mass information, how can growers make sure they’re getting reliable advice?
I would talk to as many people as I could that are doing what you’re doing. You’re not inventing something new. It doesn’t matter where you live, within a hundred miles of you, somebody is doing something very similar to what you want to do.
Find out who they went with, what made them successful, what do they not like about their process of getting set up. Get as much info as you can from going to seminars, going to trade shows. Meet with the people you’re going to buy your stuff from because those are the same people that are going to support you afterward, and if you don’t like ’em, find somebody else. If you don’t think you’re going to want to call these people weekly or daily in your first year, you’re going to have to find somebody else, because that’s realistically what you should be doing.
What’s CropKing’s signature approach?
Customer service. I’m not selling something that is extremely unique. It’s not, “You have to have this specific thing to succeed.” What you need to succeed is support, the ability to get through the problems, to not have a catastrophic failure, all of those things that, when you look at our ag space, crush people in their first year.
There is only a really small group of successful small businesses that last longer than 10 years. Well, if you look at the number of growers that CropKing has set up over the last 38 years, it would be safe to say that over 80% of them are still in business 10-to-15 years later.
What should new growers know about financing?
There’s a lot of entry points. The growers that Contain is more likely financing, and the growers that CropKing typically sells packages to, are relatively small commercial growers, typically less than an acre, most of the timeless than half an acre.
When it comes to financing these guys, they probably don’t have the agricultural experience that traditional banks are looking for to say, “We believe in ag, and you obviously have the skillset to make this successful.”
Our answer to that is a business plan model that we can help you put together that is very beneficial to the bank and being able to look at it and go, “OK, we understand what you’re accomplishing and how you’re going to be able to do this,” and you can then explain to the financier the support system that you have by going through CropKing. So we can help people navigate that.
In the end, though, if you’re not financeable, you’re not financeable. If you’ve got bad credit, or you don’t have substantial assets, or you’ve gone through two bankruptcies, there probably are not great options to get a loan to start a business.
Why work with Contain?
Even if you are financeable, an agriculture loan can still be more difficult to get than a traditional business loan. This is where Contain comes in, and I think, is starting to fill a niche, in that you guys are saying, “Hey, we know that if you, the grower, are going to buy from x, y, or z, you are more typically successful than not, so we’re willing to finance it, assuming it’s coming through these channels.”
There was clearly a missing section in finance as it relates to small commercial ag in controlled environments, and that’s what you guys are filling. I think it’s great. And you guys are first to market, but I think in the next five years you’ll see more similar models to what you guys do, and I think it’s awesome.
How does financing change based on grow size?
Financing of a less than half an acre and financing a two-acre are worlds different. If you are financeable and you’re trying to do something that’s less than a million dollars, you could probably accomplish that in the next four or six months if you’ve got your ducks in a row. If you are trying to do a two-acre project and you’re looking for financing, if you’re not anticipating 18 months from now, you’re really delusional. It’s just that long of a process to get this stuff together.
When you’re talking about building a two-acre facility, you’re talking about way more involvement with city officials and understanding what the look of this has to be and bringing in infrastructure and utilities and turn lanes and all that stuff that people who are building a two-bay, four-bay, half-acre greenhouse get away with by putting it in the back of their property and utilizing the wonderful world of ag exemptions.
What trends are you most excited about in indoor agriculture?
There’s the increased focus on data collection. It’s got pros and cons. A lot of people are looking at AI and data as a way to get to where it’s more of a process and an app, and we’re just setting programs. I don’t think we’re going to get to that level. I think the human aspect in growing is very key, and you’ll never work that out of a greenhouse. But the ability to have this data to make that human that much better is extremely valuable.
This conversation transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.