Instead of starting at his new job, Folger spent his three months gardening leaving deciding to set up his own, er, gardening, business.
He launched The Stem, a “one-stop-shop for all things green”, selling indoor and outdoor plants, dried flowers, grow-your-own sets and pots. Turnover is set to hit £2 million this year.
“I’d taken the well-trodden path into investment banking — completing internships and working at Goldman Sachs and Jefferies International before spending three years at Rothschild,” Folger, 29, explains.
During gardening leave before a new role, however, Folger found he “loved being surrounded by plants and nature, and with a long-standing interest in e-commerce, the idea of selling plants online suddenly seemed very obvious.”
He spent summer 2019 brainstorming and creating his brand, The Stem, before paying an agency to make a website, which took six months. He sourced plants from wholesalers and “photographed them in the street as the lighting was too bad in my flat”.
“I needed somewhere to keep the plants, so I found the cheapest space I could in London — a 100sq ft unit on the second story of an old Victorian warehouse in Wembley,” Folger adds. “Only, the goods lift didn’t work and the plant trolleys didn’t fit.”
The next step was delivery: “I thought the easiest way would be to do it myself, so I bought an electric van and swapped working on £10 billion M&A deals to hand-delivering plants around London.”
The entrepreneur launched his business in March 2020 — just as the world was shutting up shop for lockdown.
“Being a pandemic baby really helped the business gain initial momentum,” Folger explains. “We went from 30 orders in March to more than 300 in April.
“It was just me doing everything, from planning delivery routes on Google Maps to ordering stock, delivering orders — although since it was in lockdown, at least I didn’t have to worry about the traffic — then customer service and managing our Instagram.”