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The Story Behind Bountea
Submitted by Organic Bountea on Wed, 07/18/2007 - 04:32.
Company/Retail Spotlight
Soil Health Solutions, LLC
Background Information
It all started back in 1993 with the first Guinness World Record. John Evans was gardening like he had never gardened before, creating gigantic vegetables that took all the prizes at the Alaska State Fair. People wanted to know how he did it.
John had to be outdoors each day working the soil; it was his heritage. The Evans family had a tradition of dedicated gardening and agriculture, stretching back 500 years to ancestors in Wales who owned farms and country estates. John’s father, Mike Evans, age 94, to this day cultivates two acres of rare trees, shrubs and perennials and enough vegetables to feed ten people.
Ever on the search for ways to make his garden better, John had come across the writings of Elaine Ingham on the benefits of aerated compost tea. He was fascinated, and realized that the local Alaska humus had extraordinary biological and mineral properties – perfect to brew exceptional compost tea. Through trial and error and ‘soil intuition,’ John discovered special ingredients that helped the microbes in the tea grow faster and better.
After years of research, John put together a complete biological and nutrient system that he called the Bountea Compost Tea System. Now his vegetables were growing out of control: 9 World Records, 18 State Records, and over 400 awards for quality vegetable.
The media started buzzing: Discovery Channel, Home and Garden Network, Real TV, BBC Radio and National Public Radio. He was approached by Dole to help them grow bigger and better pineapples. Gardeners wanted to share in his results, so he put together the first prototype of the Bountea Brew Kit to sell to his neighbors in Alaska.
Then came five years of abortive attempts to get his product to market. Nothing seemed to work: business colleagues let him down; he could not find enough time or money to grow the business; he lacked marketing expertise. The whole enterprise was stalling. Typically, the main problem was personnel; where was a partner he could rely on?
Meanwhile, Roland Evans, John’s brother was contentedly dedicated to his book writing, university teaching, and psychotherapy practice in Boulder, Colorado. It was a comfortable life. One frustration was Roland’s garden: he was trying to grow flowers, shrubs, trees and vegetable at 7,400 feet altitude on soil that was decomposed granite – your basic grit. He was losing 50% of his plants to drought, sunburn and poor nutrition. John knew he had the solution, and he sent Roland a Bountea Brew Kit.
Like most gardeners, Roland was skeptical. He knew almost nothing about soil ecology and the Soil Food Web. Probably, all John’s world records were due to long Alaska summer days and plenty of moisture -- but he gave the stuff a try anyway. The Bountea brewing process was unfamiliar: “Add the living Alaska Humisoil and the Bioactivator to the brew kit full of water and turn on the air pump.” After 24 hours the compost tea was foaming and smelling like a cross between rich soil and wine. Roland sprayed the Bountea over his vegetables and waited to see the results.
Not much happened for three weeks and then the vegetables started to grow. All the plants suddenly looked bigger, stronger and happier. The tomato plants eventually got so large Roland had to hack off most of the limbs. By the time those plants set lots of tasty tomatoes, Roland was hooked; the stuff worked!
With some hesitation, Roland agreed to join John in a partnership, Soil Health Solutions. Now there were two brothers who had only the most basic knowledge of business. Their first idea was to license the brew kit technology to a third party; that was a time-consuming disaster. The next idea was to get a high-powered consultant to write an expensive business plan. What a great plan! Sadly, the plan was for a completely different business.
Finally, the brothers had to bite the hardest bullet: do it yourself. Roland set up manufacturing and distribution in Denver Colorado and got his son to design and build a website. The orders started to trickle in. It became clear that John’s strength was in research, product development, and promotion. That left Roland to put together a team of talented people who could help grow the business.
Current Information
2006 was a turning point for Soil Health Solutions. John Evans left for Ireland to develop the business in Europe. Moria Eggers came on as General Manager and reorganized production with innovative new products, labeling and packaging. The business had been reliant on web-based seasonal gardeners; this created uneven cash flow. An expansion into stores in Colorado and California helped smooth out wild fluctuations. An enthusiastic distributor in Korea began supplying the South East Asia organic market with Bountea products.
This year, 2007, continues a period of growth into hydroponic retail stores, a brand-new website (bountea.com) and the setting up of a further manufacturing center in Santa Rosa, California. Still firmly in the start-up phase, Soil Health Solutions has only three employees. Using a decentralized business model, it regularly works with a network of ten professional consultants on an “as needed” basis. This keeps costs under control and allows for greater flexibility. A small start-up company has to be able to turn on a dime.
The central products are those originally developed by John Evans. The Bountea Compost Tea System is an inexpensive brewing system with four exceptional ingredients: Alaska Humisoil, Bountea Bioactivator, Marine Mineral Magic (minerals and nutrients) and Root Web (beneficial fungi). Together, these form a symbiotic system that creates stronger, healthier plant growth based on vast colonies of microbial soil life. One of the properties that make the Bountea system unique is that results are cumulative; the soil and plants get better each year.
The Bountea System is geared mainly toward dedicated gardeners, landscapers and organic horticulturalists. For busy gardeners, SHS added Quantum Liquid Compost QLC, an easy to use, super-concentrated, stabilized form of compost tea that is excellent for hydroponic systems, houseplants and the whole garden. This will soon be available at Whole Foods.
Because so much soil has been mismanaged with over-use of chemicals, John developed Soil Life Starter to clean up soil toxicity and generate essential soil biology. Tested on pure subsoil, QLC can help establish a lush green lawn in six weeks. For the horticultural and agricultural markets, SHS supplies bulk quantities of Alaska Humisoil. This is the humus that allows casinos to grow palm trees in the Las Vegas desert.
The strength of Soil Health Solutions rests on its products. These consistently achieve outstanding results in organic growing. The market for nutritious organic food is expanding enormously and with it a demand for effective sustainable growing methods. Supermarket ‘organic’ vegetables are almost the same as conventional produce -- grown with an eye to quantity rather than quality. The future will see sophisticated customers increasingly concerned about the nutritional value of what they eat. With improved public knowledge about health and diet, consumers want food that is tasty, nutrient rich and grown with care. Soil Health Solutions is poised to ride the growing movement toward quality.
For a small business, quality of product is essential -- but so is quality of vision and intention. Like a garden, you have to cultivate your business. It needs lots of personal care, attention, and know-how. You cannot expect it to bloom overnight; slow growth is more natural and sustainable. The attitude you bring to a garden is one of hard work, patience, attention to detail, and the knowledge that if it does not thrive this year, it will probably do better next season. A business must envision what will grow best next year – and the years after.
A gardener is always looking to the soil and plants; they are the essential elements. The products and market make up the soil in which a company grows. The people are the plants that thrive in that soil. Like plants, every person needs support, encouragement and appreciation. This applies equally to company personnel and to customers. Without human beings, the whole enterprise is like an untended dusty backyard with nothing in it -- not a place where you want to spend time. The vision of Soil Health Solutions is to turn that empty backyard into a fertile and productive garden.
Soil Health Solutions, LLC
Background Information
It all started back in 1993 with the first Guinness World Record. John Evans was gardening like he had never gardened before, creating gigantic vegetables that took all the prizes at the Alaska State Fair. People wanted to know how he did it.
John had to be outdoors each day working the soil; it was his heritage. The Evans family had a tradition of dedicated gardening and agriculture, stretching back 500 years to ancestors in Wales who owned farms and country estates. John’s father, Mike Evans, age 94, to this day cultivates two acres of rare trees, shrubs and perennials and enough vegetables to feed ten people.
Ever on the search for ways to make his garden better, John had come across the writings of Elaine Ingham on the benefits of aerated compost tea. He was fascinated, and realized that the local Alaska humus had extraordinary biological and mineral properties – perfect to brew exceptional compost tea. Through trial and error and ‘soil intuition,’ John discovered special ingredients that helped the microbes in the tea grow faster and better.
After years of research, John put together a complete biological and nutrient system that he called the Bountea Compost Tea System. Now his vegetables were growing out of control: 9 World Records, 18 State Records, and over 400 awards for quality vegetable.
The media started buzzing: Discovery Channel, Home and Garden Network, Real TV, BBC Radio and National Public Radio. He was approached by Dole to help them grow bigger and better pineapples. Gardeners wanted to share in his results, so he put together the first prototype of the Bountea Brew Kit to sell to his neighbors in Alaska.
Then came five years of abortive attempts to get his product to market. Nothing seemed to work: business colleagues let him down; he could not find enough time or money to grow the business; he lacked marketing expertise. The whole enterprise was stalling. Typically, the main problem was personnel; where was a partner he could rely on?
Meanwhile, Roland Evans, John’s brother was contentedly dedicated to his book writing, university teaching, and psychotherapy practice in Boulder, Colorado. It was a comfortable life. One frustration was Roland’s garden: he was trying to grow flowers, shrubs, trees and vegetable at 7,400 feet altitude on soil that was decomposed granite – your basic grit. He was losing 50% of his plants to drought, sunburn and poor nutrition. John knew he had the solution, and he sent Roland a Bountea Brew Kit.
Like most gardeners, Roland was skeptical. He knew almost nothing about soil ecology and the Soil Food Web. Probably, all John’s world records were due to long Alaska summer days and plenty of moisture -- but he gave the stuff a try anyway. The Bountea brewing process was unfamiliar: “Add the living Alaska Humisoil and the Bioactivator to the brew kit full of water and turn on the air pump.” After 24 hours the compost tea was foaming and smelling like a cross between rich soil and wine. Roland sprayed the Bountea over his vegetables and waited to see the results.
Not much happened for three weeks and then the vegetables started to grow. All the plants suddenly looked bigger, stronger and happier. The tomato plants eventually got so large Roland had to hack off most of the limbs. By the time those plants set lots of tasty tomatoes, Roland was hooked; the stuff worked!
With some hesitation, Roland agreed to join John in a partnership, Soil Health Solutions. Now there were two brothers who had only the most basic knowledge of business. Their first idea was to license the brew kit technology to a third party; that was a time-consuming disaster. The next idea was to get a high-powered consultant to write an expensive business plan. What a great plan! Sadly, the plan was for a completely different business.
Finally, the brothers had to bite the hardest bullet: do it yourself. Roland set up manufacturing and distribution in Denver Colorado and got his son to design and build a website. The orders started to trickle in. It became clear that John’s strength was in research, product development, and promotion. That left Roland to put together a team of talented people who could help grow the business.
Current Information
2006 was a turning point for Soil Health Solutions. John Evans left for Ireland to develop the business in Europe. Moria Eggers came on as General Manager and reorganized production with innovative new products, labeling and packaging. The business had been reliant on web-based seasonal gardeners; this created uneven cash flow. An expansion into stores in Colorado and California helped smooth out wild fluctuations. An enthusiastic distributor in Korea began supplying the South East Asia organic market with Bountea products.
This year, 2007, continues a period of growth into hydroponic retail stores, a brand-new website (bountea.com) and the setting up of a further manufacturing center in Santa Rosa, California. Still firmly in the start-up phase, Soil Health Solutions has only three employees. Using a decentralized business model, it regularly works with a network of ten professional consultants on an “as needed” basis. This keeps costs under control and allows for greater flexibility. A small start-up company has to be able to turn on a dime.
The central products are those originally developed by John Evans. The Bountea Compost Tea System is an inexpensive brewing system with four exceptional ingredients: Alaska Humisoil, Bountea Bioactivator, Marine Mineral Magic (minerals and nutrients) and Root Web (beneficial fungi). Together, these form a symbiotic system that creates stronger, healthier plant growth based on vast colonies of microbial soil life. One of the properties that make the Bountea system unique is that results are cumulative; the soil and plants get better each year.
The Bountea System is geared mainly toward dedicated gardeners, landscapers and organic horticulturalists. For busy gardeners, SHS added Quantum Liquid Compost QLC, an easy to use, super-concentrated, stabilized form of compost tea that is excellent for hydroponic systems, houseplants and the whole garden. This will soon be available at Whole Foods.
Because so much soil has been mismanaged with over-use of chemicals, John developed Soil Life Starter to clean up soil toxicity and generate essential soil biology. Tested on pure subsoil, QLC can help establish a lush green lawn in six weeks. For the horticultural and agricultural markets, SHS supplies bulk quantities of Alaska Humisoil. This is the humus that allows casinos to grow palm trees in the Las Vegas desert.
The strength of Soil Health Solutions rests on its products. These consistently achieve outstanding results in organic growing. The market for nutritious organic food is expanding enormously and with it a demand for effective sustainable growing methods. Supermarket ‘organic’ vegetables are almost the same as conventional produce -- grown with an eye to quantity rather than quality. The future will see sophisticated customers increasingly concerned about the nutritional value of what they eat. With improved public knowledge about health and diet, consumers want food that is tasty, nutrient rich and grown with care. Soil Health Solutions is poised to ride the growing movement toward quality.
For a small business, quality of product is essential -- but so is quality of vision and intention. Like a garden, you have to cultivate your business. It needs lots of personal care, attention, and know-how. You cannot expect it to bloom overnight; slow growth is more natural and sustainable. The attitude you bring to a garden is one of hard work, patience, attention to detail, and the knowledge that if it does not thrive this year, it will probably do better next season. A business must envision what will grow best next year – and the years after.
A gardener is always looking to the soil and plants; they are the essential elements. The products and market make up the soil in which a company grows. The people are the plants that thrive in that soil. Like plants, every person needs support, encouragement and appreciation. This applies equally to company personnel and to customers. Without human beings, the whole enterprise is like an untended dusty backyard with nothing in it -- not a place where you want to spend time. The vision of Soil Health Solutions is to turn that empty backyard into a fertile and productive garden.