We don’t often provide updates like this one, but we have been working hard on lots of improvements. We wanted to take a quick opportunity to let you know what we’ve been doing, and what is still coming. We’d like to begin by wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2024! We’d also like to take a moment and express our gratitude for your business, and the trust you place in us.
Now some updates:
If you are seeing this article again, that is not a mistake. We have added another round of steep seed price decreases, including our popular Organic Sprouting Broccoli, Organic Waltham 29 Broccoli, and Organic Calabrese Green Sprouting Broccoli. These broccoli varieties have come down by 10-20% in price! We are continuing to make price decreases for many seeds across our site as new crops come in and the many variables that affect seed costs continue to ease.
The quick summary update is, after a period of Covid driven cost increases, we have finally been able to lower prices across the board. So far, we have been able to reduce prices on countless hundreds of varieties of vegetable, microgreens, sprouts, herb seeds and more. We expect to continue to reduce prices in the foreseeable future. We hope you notice these improved prices, especially on the bulk sizes.
Now, for a longer ‘reasons why’ version: The garden seed industry is usually very predictable. The amount of seed the nation will require next year will likely be very close to the demand last year. Because seed can’t sit on a shelf forever waiting to be planted (germination rates decline over time), it doesn’t make sense to grow many years’ supply in advance.
When an event like COVID drives garden seed demand sky-high, as it did in 2020, it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the availability of seed for 2021 and beyond. Also, Covid lockdowns caused some seed farms, especially internationally, to miss a full planting season. For example, we grow most of our black oil sunflower seed in Italy, and our growers missed the 2020 planting season. There are countless examples. You may also recall that in 2021 and 2022, there were Covid related problems with international sea cargo, with container ships parked off US ports sometimes for weeks or even months, waiting to be unloaded. During this time, the cost of shipping a container full of goods internationally skyrocketed. For a short period in late 2021, the freight cost for a full container went from $3000 to almost $30,000. Almost a 1000% increase in freight costs. While we grow a very large percentage of our seeds domestically, we do contract with international growers for seed production, especially in the southern hemisphere where possible. We have growers in Chile, Brazil, Poland, Italy, France, and many other countries. And finally, during much of the past three years, the USA has been dealing with generally high rates of inflation.
So… between Covid driven seed shortages, insane international freight costs, and high inflation, we have seen our cost of producing and purchasing seed increase like no time in the living experience of anyone in the seed industry. While we tried to keep prices as low as possible, we had no choice but to increase prices over the past three years.
Inflation seems to be easing, international shipping rates have finally normalized, and seed production has finally caught up with the Covid surge. Garden seed inventories are normalizing, and we have dramatically increased our efforts in growing seed directly. We grow, mill, and process a huge volume of seed in the Central Valley of California, and have dramatically increased the volume we grow ourselves over the last couple of years.
The net effect of all these factors is, we can finally lower prices, and are doing so, almost across the board. We have already lowered prices on many hundreds of varieties and expect to be able to lower prices in the near future. Some varieties are now priced 10% to 15% lower than they were last year, while other varieties are 30% to 50% lower than last year. We hope you have noticed.
We have been working hard on improving the TrueLeafMarket.com website. Here are some quick bullet points of some of the major improvements we made in 2023. We also hope you have noticed.
Headless Ecommerce - In 2023 we re-platformed the website with a headless ecommerce architecture. The result is a website that is much, much faster, and more user friendly, especially on mobile devices.
Improved Flyout Menu - We have dramatically improved the findability of products by browsing with the main flyout menu. These improvements are most noticeable on mobile devices.
New Search Engine - We have upgraded the search engine, and the result is faster, more accurate results.
Garden Seed Selector Quizzes - We have been working hard on a guided shopping experience in some of the vegetable seed categories, where newer gardeners have struggled to pick the perfect varieties to grow in their garden based on their growing zone, desired characteristics, and level of experience. We plan on building out more quizzes over time, but hope you find these seed selector quizzes helpful.
Garden Planner - We have partnered with Hortisketch to make available a web-based garden planner and mapping tool, that is fully integrated into your True Leaf Market account. This paid optional service is the best in class among garden planners. We hope you’ll check it out.
Bulbs & Pre-Ordering - We have begun to offer bulbs and plant starts, beginning with garlic, potatoes, onions, and other edible starts. By summer we will be offering flower bulbs for fall planting, and later this year spring bulbs for planting next year. All are available for pre-order.
2024 Update - Thank you for those of you who have supported us as we introduce bulb and root start offerings. Also, thank you for your patience as we continue to improve our systems and processes that come with offering a new type of product. We are continuing to improve the way we handle the bulb pre-ordering system and will continue to introduce updates that improve your bulb ordering experience. We have fulfilled all Onion, Potato, Shallot, Rhubarb, Asparagus, and Horseradish orders for the 2024 season. These categories will be available for 2025 shipping preorders starting in May/June. We are continuing to offer pre-orders for fall sown garlic that will ship out September-October this year.
We will continue to roll out new improvements including improved filtering functionality, subscription options for those making regular recurring purchases, more personalized product recommendations, and even more speed enhancements. We are proud to have been ranked the #1 best online shop in the Garden & Craft > Flowers & Plants category by Newsweek magazine for the past two years. We plan on improving your online experience with us even more.
Thank you again for your business and trust. We cannot express our gratitude enough.
The True Leaf Market Team
11 comments
any discounts for disabled seniors? on a fixed income. never hurts to ask.
True Leaf Market, you are the best! Thank you for having the integrity to do business honestly and passing information & savings on to your dedicated customers.
Thank you for the update! I wish I had known just 8 hours earlier. 😪
I want to thank you for your very well written and helpful, planting guides. I discovered them last summer and have spent a lot of productive hours learning the ins and outs of correct seed starting and plant needs. I have been gardening all of my life and your site continues to inform me of details that are new to me. Well done.
I gave up all the other seed and almost all other gargen buying websites (you don’t sell rose bushes :(>……….). I also brag about your company to everybody I can.