Grower Stories #13: Daniel
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Ledtonic Enlightens Us on the Specifics of LED Lighting
If you don’t know what equipment you should use for growing flowers, this is exactly the article for you! LEDTonic shares their best growing and lighting practices and how to consistently grow top quality products. Check it out below!
Julia (AskGrowers) : LED grow lights is a niche market to set up in. What made you decide to build a business in this area?
Daniel (LEDtonic) : That’s absolutely right. We decided to have a go at grow lights primarily because of our background and interest in indoor growing. Watching plants come to life, regardless of species, is wonderful. Being able to harvest its fruits knowing that they are a result of one’s effort, patience, and skill makes it even more fulfilling. We, primarily Max, grow all kinds of fruits, vegetables, and plants ourselves and indoor growing is a passion of ours so it made sense to us to do something in this space.
I, Daniel, have a background in e-commerce and after running previous business, me and Max figured we should do a project together. This became LEDTonic.
Julia : Is all your equipment made in-house, or do you source any of it from outside of LEDTonic?
Daniel : We work with specific factories, which we have visited and vetted ourselves, to make the necessary hardware for our products. Some of our products are simpler while others are more complex and need parts from a number of different manufacturers and also different countries. One step that is shared among all of our products is that our team hands-on tests and inspects every single unit that we sell
Julia : When was your first cannabis experience? How did you like it?
Daniel : Good question! For me my first experiences with cannabis were a bit underwhelming. The very first time I got to try cannabis was at a party where a few friends passed around a joint. Due to the alcohol buzz I did not get any significant effect the first time around. A year or two later I was backpacking in Australia and there cannabis was a lot more common and accepted. It was during this trip that I got to experience cannabis all out and it has stuck with me since.
Julia : What about LEDTonic makes your company different from other LED grow suppliers? What do you hang your hat on as a business?
Daniel : Correct data, transparency, and helpfulness. Before we started LEDTonic we were browsing the internet for simple LED grow lights that we could use in tight grow areas. We found that almost all sellers were Asian. This, of course, is not an issue in itself but once we started testing a couple of these “Amazon lights” we quickly realized that their performance and promised specifications were subpar. Once we peaked inside the lamps we even noticed that some of them were put together in a far from safe manner. We thought we could do better so we started making our own lamps and recording the testing so that the numbers and specs could be visually confirmed by anyone. We also noticed that plenty of growers were complaining in various forums about grow light brands being unresponsive and difficult to get help from. When someone starts out with indoor growing and literally starts his or her first grow, so many questions come up. Both about light but also about growing in general. We take time to reply to everyone who contacts us and help them throughout their grow. We want our customers to succeed, plain and simple. Max has had a several month long conversation with one particular customer who we have helped go from a beginner in a 2x2’ (4 sq ft) grow space to decent grower now filling a 4x4’ (16 sq ft) space.
Julia : What are the specifics of growing cannabis using LEDTonic equipment?
Daniel : There’s really not much to it. We like to keep things simple but effective. Our current Z-series of grow lights (the Z2 and Z5) are super simple to get started with -- anyone can do it. Connect the power cord to an outlet and hang the lamp at an appropriate distance (between 12-30” depending on what you grow) and you’re set.
Our new series of grow lights, the Q-series, will be out in a few months. These lamps may be slightly more difficult to work with as they are a fair bit more powerful and designed primarily for experienced and mid to large scale growers.
Julia : How has your business been affected by COVID-19? How have you overcome it?
Daniel : COVID-19 got us quite worried. Both considering our plant and its inhabitants but also our own business. Surprisingly, our sales grew significantly once people were more or less forced to stay home. We can only guess but it seems that people find indoor growing a nice hobby when being stuck at home. Plus, not knowing if dispensaries and large grow operations would be closed due to the virus made people more concerned about supply. Instead of relying on others to grow enough weed, our customers seem to have taken things in their own hands, especially during the pandemic.
Julia : How do you measure success?
Daniel : By making our customers achieve their goals. Anyone can sell a grow light. But making a grow light that is effective, easy to understand, does what it promises, AND helps the grower go from seed to harvest without issues, that’s success for us.
Julia : If you could smoke with anyone in this world, who would it be? :)
Daniel : I would like to hear what Elon Musk thinks about the future of, well, everything, after getting in the right state of mind :-). We got a taste of it on Joe Rogan’s podcast but in a less formal and public environment, I believe a more interesting discussion would take place.
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