There is estimated to be 40 million acres of lawn or turf grass in the U.S., making the grass in people’s backyards one of the largest crops in the U.S.. And, yet, when Coulter Lewis went to find products to take care of the lawn at his new house, he didn’t like his options.
Lewis, the founder and CEO at more sustainable lawn care brand Sunday, told TechCrunch’s Found podcast that after years of working with organic farmers for his first startup, a natural food company called Quinn Snacks, he was surprised to see a lawn-care aisle entirely stocked with harmful chemicals with none of the natural solutions he was used to seeing out in the fields.
“There’s kind of one old-school brand selling really poisonous stuff,” Lewis said. “In fact, you’ve got Roundup that is facing a $10 billion settlement because it causes cancer. It’s the most popular product in the category. But it’s also on this massive cancer litigation. It’s like stranger-than-fiction-type stuff.”
Lewis started to dig into the category further and discovered just how massive the industry was despite its limited options. He also found out that despite how much people were spending on their lawns, many people, like himself, weren’t really sure the best way to approach it.
“We learned that no one knows anything about lawn and garden care,” Lewis said. “I mean, you know, that’s a generalization, but it’s 98% true. People are generally at the stage of like, ‘I kill house plants.’ So they have that level of confidence, yet they’ve got a piece of the earth to care for, and they feel overwhelmed by it.”
That void of consumer knowledge is why Sunday launched as a direct-to-consumer (DTC) subscription model, Lewis said. Consumers sign up and send in a sample of the dirt from their lawn and Sunday uses that sample and satellite imagery to pick out what products someone needs and tells them how much and when they need them.
These extra steps are what makes Lewis think the company has been able to find success, both with customers and with investors, despite launching in 2018, after the DTC wave had passed. The startup has raised more than $78 million from investors including Forerunner Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners and Sequoia, among others.
“A lot of DTC brands in the past, were saying, like, it’s just like we you get in the store but you don’t have to go to the store. And I was like, that is not a value prop,” Lewis said.”Skipping the trip to the store is something Amazon has absolutely nailed. And you’ve got to be able to do something that is that is well beyond that in terms of providing value to the customer, and I think we saw that bear out.”
Sunday works with physical retail stores too to sell products with more general lawn care solutions based on regional soil data and weather conditions. Lewis said the expansion to retail stores was earlier than he expected but big-box retailers like Lowes and Walmart reached out to Sunday about launching in their stores, and after fighting to get his last startup on store shelves, he wasn’t going to say no.
Sunday has expanded from its lawn care roots to categories like garden and pest control with more product and retail expansion to come in the future.
“We’re going so fast right now, it’s so exciting,” Lewis said. “So I’m like this is this is a heyday, and I’m really excited about it. What that will look to our customers, to the world. is really having more and more help here, more and more digital tools, and products and resources to be good at this part of your life.”
