Tell us about Veritable
Véritable is a French company, based in Lyon, co-founded by Nicolas Géhin and Chloé Verneuil. Since 2015, we design and manufacture smart indoor gardens that empower everyone to grow, harvest and enjoy their own aromatics and produce year long, very easily and in their kitchen.
What are the key trends in the hydroponics sector?
People are increasingly looking for fresh food, healthier ingredients, and want to know where the source of the ingredients in their food. Growing at home answers many needs and allows anyone to benefit from locally grown and harvested vegetables. Hydroponics players are building ready to use solutions, delivering maximum efficiency with a lot less maintenance and knowledge needed.
Are your products aimed at consumers only?
Our target customers are individuals who like to cook and the garden(s) will be on their kitchen countertop. With working from home becoming more mainstream, customers are also using the garden in their office as a decoration. They grow colorful flowers like pansies, pétunia or phlox. Imagine enjoying radiant red, purple, white, yellow flowers for 4 to 5 months without doing much! It’s a creativity and happiness booster.
High end restaurants and bars are also growing their aromatics with Véritable. The 1 Michelin Star restaurant L’auberge des Saint Pères on the outskirts of Paris is a big fan and grow a wide variety of herbs in 12 Véritable gardens, lined up in the kitchen!
I’ve also seen mixologists in a bar harvesting their « bar-grown » rosemary, thyme or basil to put in their cocktails. The results are fantastic and really elevate the experience!
How does your product work and what sort of plants can you grow with Véritable?
Véritable delivers a global solution including the device (the indoor garden) and the refills which we call the Lingots® (French for ingots). The Lingot® contains the natural substrate, the nutrients and the seeds. Thus, our community grows among the 72 different plants we offer in the collection. Our success comes from our users getting generous harvests without doing anything, not even seedling.
Our range includes of course the most popular herbs and vegetables such as basil, cilantro, tomatoes and peppers. We also offer our community a wide selection of plants to be discovered like green anise, shiso (Asian plant), or begonia flowers.
Are you launching any new products or accessories to complement your smart garden products?
There are several ways to taste aromatics, one is to cook and eat them and the other is to infuse their rich flavours in drinks.
We will introduce a new giftset specially created for cocktail-making. It will include Rosemary, Thyme, Lemon Basil and Spearmint Lingots and the mixologist essential stainless steel tools: a muddler, a bar spoon and a jigger. Last but not least, we create a 10 cocktail recipe booklet including aromatics herbs which we hope our customers will enjoy.
Which countries in the EMEA region are you targeting and any particular channels you are looking to develop?
We are targeting Scandinavia, Southern Europe and the Gulf region to find distributors and local specialists in the consumer electronics channel.
What sets Véritable apart from other brands in the hydroponics category?
There are multiple differentiating points that set Véritable ahead of the competition. Our customers are cooks and we know the kitchen space is tight, that’s why Véritable® delivers the biggest yield on the most compact foot print. Our patented Lingot® is the biggest ready to use refill on the market. The Véritable® is as small as a A4 sheet of paper on which our customer can grow 4 different plants at the same time.
Choice of plants is a key factor when it comes to explore different tastes. We offer more than 70 Lingots of aromatics, young greens, baby vegetables, edible flowers and small fruits.
Our exclusive LED grow light system adapts its intensity based on your kitchen ambient light to give the plants the optimum amount of light and ultimately growth. The Adapt Light™ featured on the SMART model will automatically regulate the light when the sun shines on your plant. It’s clearly a customer’s favorite.
The blinking watering alarm system is another great feature. After 3 weeks of irrigation automony, your plants will be thirsty. The LED light will indicate the low water level by blinking. It’s unmissable and makes you a professional gardener!
Last but not least, sustainability is a core value for us. Our gardens and Lingots® are made in Lyon, France. 80% of our suppliers are within 200km and we source our organic certified seeds from local producers. The Lingot® is the first 100% biodegradable and compostable refill. There is still more we can do to limit our footprint and impact. We have some revolutionary projects in the works that will be announced in the coming months.
How has the Business France Partner Programme benefited your business?
Business France Partner Programme is wonderful and we feel very lucky as a young company to get the support to increase our presence internationally. We exhibited at several tradeshows with their support (CES, Glee and Channel Summit). They’ve also helping hiring new talent in our export team. We work closely with the Lyon office.
Do you have a structured channel programme? Please explain how you work with your channel partners
We exhibit at many B2B shows as we can in culinary, gardening, consumer electronics. Our indoor gardens have quite an extraordinary power of engagement and create emotions of awe and wonder. It’s important for our customers to experience the smell of basil or tomato plant indoor and say "Hey, I’d like to grow it too!".
From a channel point of view, we support our distributors and retail customers with a great choice of point of sale displays to educate end consumers and recreate that amazement in stores. We create lots of content (video and photo) inspiring our customers to try new recipes, learn about plant pollination or harvesting tips.
Any partnerships, sponsorships or collaborations to share?
We have many partnerships with brands around the kitchen such as Kusmi Tea, Weiss, Daan Tech - Bob and collaborate with influencers such as @CuisineTest, @amelietauziede, @ma_healthy_tendency
Véritable® is exhibiting at Channel Summit EMEA 2022
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