We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Austin Arrington. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Austin below.

Austin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

PLANT Group was founded in 2016. My co-founder Nick Drewchin and I were were dreaming up a new company focused on preserving and protecting the planet’s natural resources. Out of nowhere, Nick said, “Let’s call the company PLANT”. As we envisioned the company as a collective becoming a movement, I replied with “PLANT Group”. And then from there, the mission of the company was found as an acronym in PLANT: People Learning About Nature Together. The idea with that is that we would develop technologies and services focused on connecting humans and nature. We believe that envisioning humans as an active part of managing ecosystems is the key to decarbonization and ecological conservation.

Austin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I originally got into the sustainability industry as a laborer for a company called Alive Structures (https://www.alivestructures.com/) installing green roofs and green spaces in New York City. After that I was inspired to go further down this path and got my masters in Environmental Science from SUNY-ESF in Syracuse, NY. Upon finishing grad school I decided to start PLANT Group with a few like-minded entrepreneurs interested in creating market-based solutions to address climate change.

PLANT Group started out mostly doing design-build work. We designed and built green roofs, urban farms, and green spaces across NY, PA, NJ, and CA. We found out that many of our clients were interested in irrigation and water use efficiency, so we actually started developing our own smart irrigation systems using soil moisture sensors, microcontrollers, and web software. We built solutions that helped urban farms like Brooklyn Grange save up to 25% on irrigation water use. After that, we knew that incorporating technology would be a key part of our business.

COVID-19 moved us even further into the direction of developing sustainability software (as we were limited in the physical projects we could work on). Since then we have had the opportunity to work on a wide range of technologies focused on decarbonization and sustainability, including:

– MMRV (Measurement Monitoring Reporting Verification) software to estimate GHG emissions and removals from agricultural activities for regenerative agriculture non-profit ESMC (https://ecosystemservicesmarket.org/)
– A web application for monitoring biodiversity
– AI (Artificial Intelligence) systems for scheduling wind turbine maintenance for the leading renewable energy company NextEra Energy

I am proud that we have been able to develop and bring to market software solutions to help decarbonize the planet. You can learn more about some of our software here: https://www.plantgroupnyc.com/software

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Building our reputation was all about finding clients who had a need in the sustainability space, crafting custom solutions, and then following through with measured results.

I would also say LinkedIn has been an incredibly useful marketing tool. We use LinkedIn to tell the stories of our impact and find new B2B leads. In fact, we just share what we we’ve been working on with our network, and many of our largest clients end up reaching out to us on LinkedIn

Check out a testimonial from one of our clients:

“Incorporating the solar powered smart irrigation system has been a true game changer for Life Do Grow farm. We are an entirely off-grid, community based urban farm. As such, water has always been a significant barrier to our growth. Ever since installing the solar irrigation system, however, our 40ft hoop house has significantly increased its efficiency. We now have our water tanks set to automatically water our vegetable rows…and the impact has been tremendous. Our tomatoes have continued to flourish well into December, and that is largely due to the consistency in water which we have not been able to provide before. Moving forward, we see this as a key component to the growth of our urban farm.” – Alex Epstein, Co-Founder – Urban Creators

Have you ever had to pivot?

COVID-19 really impacted our ability to do on the ground work, and forced us to really dive deep into rebranding ourselves as a sustainable technology company. What was at the time a major challenge, turned out to be beneficial for our business, as through software development we have been able to generate more revenue with much lower overhead.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.plantgroupnyc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plant_group/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PeopleLearningAboutNatureTogether/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/plant-group/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/plant_group?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AustinArrington/videos
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@plantgroup