Be the shop that gets living soil right.
Most shops stock a bag and hope. We give you the soil, the training and thirteen years of education to hand your customers, so the growers in your area actually succeed with it. They grow better, they come back and tell people, and you finally make real margin on the heaviest thing in the shop instead of losing money on it.
Apply for an account
A few minutes, and a person reads it. Most answers go out the same week.
See the demand near you
If we approve you we build a territory report from our own order records and bring it to the call.
Place your first order
Start with a shelf of amendments that works on the soil you already sell, or put a pallet under it and the freight disappears.
Half the brands on your shelf are cheaper online, from the people who sold them to you.
You carry the floor space, the stock, the freight and the risk. Then the company that supplied you sells the same thing direct to your customer, sometimes under what you paid for it, and nobody protects your pricing. That is not competition, it is being used as a warehouse.
And the grower who used to come in for advice now believes a search bar has replaced you. They are wrong, and they usually find that out slowly, somewhere else, and never come back to tell you about it.
So the real question is what you can put on your floor that nobody can undercut you on, and that a search result cannot replace.
Soil pays. The amendments pay better, and they ship free.
Soil runs 31 to 39 percent depending on where you set your shelf price. On a heavy item at this price that is real dollars, not pennies on a commodity bag four other stores sell at the same price.
The amendment cases stack on top of that same pallet and ride along at no freight cost, so they land on your floor for exactly what you paid for them and run in the mid sixties. Soil moves the freight and pulls people through the door. The cases are where the order quietly makes its money.
Together the full first order blends to 53 percent even if you discount every single bag to the floor, and 56 percent if you hold suggested retail.
We are not going to undercut you. You undercut us.
We price every channel deliberately, and your shelf sits at the bottom of it on purpose. Amazon is the most expensive way to buy BuildASoil, because it exists for access rather than price. Our own website is next. You are cheaper than both, and the same ladder holds across the whole line.
Our MAP policy holds advertised pricing level across every dealer, and it also lets you discount in store as you see fit, which is exactly where the number above comes from. Marketplace resale is not allowed and big box cannot carry living soil at all. For once you are the cheapest place to buy the thing you stock, including cheaper than the company that made it.
A grower who succeeds comes back all year
This system is built to be reused rather than replaced, so the customer who gets it right returns for amendments every cycle instead of another bag of dirt every spring. Growers buying direct from us spend around $400 a year each on our products alone. In your store they are also buying everything else on the way to the register, and telling the next grower where they got it.
We train you and your staff, for free, forever
Living soil sounds complicated and is simple to teach. Thirteen years of grower to grower education, 3.7 million views last year, and all of it is yours to use with your staff and your customers.
A search result gives a busy grower forty conflicting answers. You can give them one method that works, and be standing there when they have a question. That is the part nobody can download.
Twenty six bagged soils, bought at retail and run side by side across soil tests, nutrients, grow-outs and taste. We had no involvement. We did not pay for it, we did not ask for it, and we found out when the video went live.
Your customers can tell the difference. That is the whole reason this works.
A commodity bag is peat, perlite and a starter charge that runs out in about three weeks, and every shop within fifty miles sells the same one at the same price. There is nothing to say about it at the counter.
Ours is a living soil built to be reused rather than replaced. Nineteen ingredients, real biology, and a nutrient charge the grower feeds instead of throwing away. Every batch is lab tested and the results are published on the product page, including the ones we would rather not publish.
That is why growers ask for it by name, why they come back for amendments instead of another bag, and why nobody down the road can undercut you on it.
We will show you the demand at your door in writing.
We have been shipping direct to growers in your area for years, and we know their zip codes. Apply for an account, and if we approve you we build a territory snapshot for your address and bring it to the call.
Real numbers from our own order records: what growers within 10, 25 and 50 miles of you bought last year, what they bought most, and how many people found our site from your area and left without buying. That last number is usually the big one, and it is the one your shelf price goes after.
Then we tell you honestly whether we think it works in your market. Sometimes the answer is no, or not yet, and you are better off hearing that from us than finding out with a pallet on your floor.
- Buyers and orders by distance
- What they spend in a year
- Top products in your area
- Site visitors who did not buy
- Commercial and bulk demand
- Distance to the nearest dealer
- A recommended first order
Built from aggregate data only. No customer names, addresses or order histories, ever. We hold our retail customers' information the same way we would hold yours.
Two ways to start. One rule to remember.
Everything on this store ships by the pound, and every product page shows you its weight. That is the only number you have to track.
Pick a starting point
One works on the soil you already sell. The other puts our soil underneath it. Neither one locks you into anything.
Send it to your cart
One click loads every case as its own line. Change any quantity, and add anything else from the catalog.
Watch the weight
The cart totals weight as you go and quotes real freight for your address, so nothing is a surprise at the end.
We book the freight
We pack it, book the truck and invoice you at fulfillment. Your landed cost is the number you saw in the cart.
The Shelf Set
Ten cases that work on the soil you already sell. Your customer top dresses the bag they are already buying from you, sees the difference, and comes back asking what else you carry. No shelf reset, no supplier to break up with.
- Craft Blend 3 lb2 cases, 24 bags
- BuildAFlower 1 gal2 cases, 10 bags
- Kashi Gold 2 lb1 case, 20 bags
- Insect Frass 4 lb1 case, 10 bags
- BuildABloom 1 lb1 case, 10 bags
- BuildAVeg 1 lb1 case, 10 bags
- Clover Cover Crop 1 lb1 case, 10 bags
- BIG 6 Micronutrients 100 g1 case, 10 bags
The Full Program
The same ten cases, with a full pallet of 3.0 Recipe underneath them. Now a grower can start and finish a season in your store instead of ordering the rest online, and the soil is the reason they drive over rather than click.
- Everything in the Shelf Set10 cases, 104 bags
Craft Blend, BuildAFlower, Kashi Gold, Insect Frass, BuildABloom, BuildAVeg, Clover Cover Crop and BIG 6 Micronutrients, in the same quantities listed to the left.
Seventy bags is the number that clears the freight line by itself, so every case stacked on top costs you nothing to ship. That is the difference between the two columns, and it is worth reading twice.
Or build your own
Neither set is a package you are locked into. Every case and every pallet is orderable on its own, and the cart totals your weight as you go. Get to 1,800 lbs however suits your shelf and the freight comes off. There is no case minimum, and no reason to pad an order to hit one.
We would rather grow through your store than around it.
Shipping heavy soil one bag at a time is expensive, and we build that cost into our price rather than surprising anyone with it. That is why a bag is $55 on our site. Last year 357,382 people in the United States came to BuildASoil.com and left without buying, and for most of them the number was too high.
We cannot fix that from Montrose, because the freight is real and someone has to carry it. A pallet on your floor removes it almost entirely, and the grower ends up paying you less than they would have paid us.
Making the soil, batch testing it, and publishing the results whether they flatter us or not. Teaching people how to grow in it, for free, the way we have for thirteen years. Keeping it first out of twenty six on the shelf, not just in the ad. We keep sending growers your way and telling them straight that buying from you is cheaper than buying from us.
You keep doingPutting it on the shelf, keeping it in stock, and looking after the grower who walks in. In return you make around fifteen dollars on a bag of soil, on a category most shops barely break even on, and the customer thanks you for it because you just saved them money.
No exclusivity contract. No minimum annual volume.
No marketing fee. No slotting. Stop whenever it stops working.
One question tells you what to hand a customer.
Big beds, or smaller containers? Ask that and the rest of the conversation writes itself. Everything after it is on the shelf you just bought.
3.0 Recipe, Craft Blend, BuildAFlower
A bed holds enough soil to carry the plant most of the way on its own. The biology has room to work, so the grower top dresses and otherwise stays out of it. Craft Blend feeds the soil between rounds and BuildAFlower carries the flower push.
From there they add Rootwise for the biology and Kashi Gold for the ferment. Those are the two that turn a good bed into one the grower talks about.
All of that, plus BuildAVeg and BuildABloom
A plant in a container will outgrow its soil before the season is done. Less volume means less buffer, and a top dress alone releases too slowly to catch up once the roots fill the pot.
BuildAVeg through the stretch and BuildABloom through flower give them that faster release without leaving living soil for a bottled line.
Same soil, same shelf, different amount of help. You are not upselling anybody, you are matching the feed to the container, and a grower who does not run out mid-flower is the one who comes back.
Talk to a person about your store.
Send us your store name and zip code. We will bring your local demand snapshot to the call and say whether we think it will work in your market.
Applications get read by a human, usually within a week.
What it is actually like to stock BuildASoil.
Four independent stores, in their own words. No incentives, no trade for the quote.
We have been able to gain and keep new customers through their guidance.
We have been working with BuildASoil for many years now and have been grateful for the knowledge and the help. There have been times they have adjusted our order to where it needed to be and kept us out of things we did not need. As far as suppliers go they are at the top of the list, always trustworthy, helpful and quick with a response. We are happy with everything so far and have no plans of leaving the BAS crew.
Moonlight Garden SupplyI could not imagine our shop without BuildASoil products.
Their small team does an outstanding job of everything, from shipping and packing to sourcing and being available for questions. The widest range of the best organic inputs, whether readily available water soluble or slow release, they have all the bases covered. Always the best products, always a fair price, always about educating the community. Our customers love the product and love how easy it is to use, as well as the quality it produces.
Hydroponic Gardening SupplyIf it wasn't for Kevin, Rootwise and BuildASoil, I wouldn't be in business for myself right now.
The main reason I work predominantly with BuildASoil is trust. I get bombarded with sales pitches almost daily from vendors who cannot provide documentation or tests on anything they offer. BuildASoil tests regularly and sends me copies within minutes of asking. Any issue, and it has never been a big one, gets handled immediately. Most importantly to me as a small business, they restricted sales to the big companies in my area and backed the local shops instead.
Token RhymeA go-to supplier that lets us help customers elevate their soil game.
If you are serious about organic gardening and farming, BuildASoil is a company that deserves your attention. Specializing in high quality organic soils and soil amendments, BuildASoil has become a go-to supplier for Greener Gardens, allowing us to help customers elevate their soil game and achieve sustainable and successful gardens.
Greener Gardens