June 2025 | Nancy Dahlberg
THE ENTREPRENEURS
CARLIE PALUZZI, 31
Co-founder and COO
JASON PALUZZI, 33
Co-founder and CEO
KYLE KROEPLIN, 34
Co-founder and Head Grower
BWH PLANT CO., Orlando
In 2019, what began as a fun weekend side hustle between friends quickly blossomed into something much bigger. When Carlie and Jason Paluzzi and Kyle Kroeplin started BWH Plant Co., it was nothing more than a pop-up shop. They used scrap materials to convert their old utility trailer into a mobile store from which they’d sell houseplants at farmer’s markets and community events around Orlando.
Back then, Carlie, who studied communications at the University of Central Florida, was working fulltime at her “dream job” leading the local collegiate marketing team at Red Bull. Her husband, Jason, also a UCF grad with experience in influencer marketing, was a logistics coordinator at FedEx. Kroeplin directed operations for his family’s irrigation business. But they had a big vision for their little side hustle — to make houseplants fun, affordable and Instagrammable for a younger generation.
Strategic Shift
Their plant store on wheels was a social media hit. As requests to bring their trailer to other cities rolled in, so did questions about shipping plants. Shipping houseplants wasn’t a common practice at the time, but the Paluzzis saw an opportunity. Carlie built a website from scratch, and they launched BWH Plant Co.’s e-commerce platform, bwhplantco.com, in late 2019. With the help of social media, their first online drop sold out in under an hour.
The team adopted a weekly restock strategy, updating their inventory every Wednesday night, which quickly became an event for plant lovers. Just months later, as the pandemic forced the world indoors, demand for houseplants exploded as people craved life and calm inside their homes, and BWH Plant Co. had laid the groundwork to thrive in the new environment. The small team retired the trailer and leaned fully into selling, packing and shipping greenery to their customers’ doorsteps. Orders surged.
In 2020, the Paluzzis, as new parents, quit their full-time jobs with benefits — Jason first, then Carlie about six months later — and went all-in on BWH. When buying from third-party growers became a quality control issue later that year, they purchased a greenhouse in Apopka and Kroeplin became the grower. “It changed so much for us. Our business was already taking off, but it gave us the proper growing environment to really control quality,” Carlie recalls.
This team of three lacked commercial growing experience, but they weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. “It’s all been trial and error and just passion and love for what we’re doing,” says Carlie. With just $4,000 in startup costs and no outside investors, they bootstrapped the company and reinvested their dollars into the business. BWH Plant Co. hit a million dollars in revenue within their first 18 months.
How It Works
BWH stocks exotic plants that are hard to find in your local big-box store, and today the company grows about 90% of its inventory. A high point was working with a tissue culture lab and finding a way to bring to market a once rare and expensive plant, the Monstera Thai Constellation, “at one of the most affordable price points that’s ever been seen,” Carlie says, and it’s one of their top sellers. “Our mission is to make rare plants affordable and accessible. We’re growers first, so we cut out the middlemen.”
After the pandemic subsided, revenue still doubled between 2022 and 2024. BWH has now shipped over a million plants to tens of thousands of customers in all 50 states, Carlie says. In Orlando’s College Park, BWH opened a small retail store called Jungle Room by BWH, which has also become a community hub with potting tables, workshops and plant swaps. Though the storefront brings in less than 10% of their sales, it’s a way to stay rooted in the community and foster a love for gardening. BWH recently added a second greenhouse, doubling growing space to 30,000 square feet.
Lessons Learned
Still, every business has its challenges, and issues with inventory management arose. Unlike selling T-shirts, BWH’s unsold inventory keeps growing, requiring continuous care and adjusting of SKUs and prices. The Paluzzis sought the help of the Florida SBDC at UCF, a small business development center, and received guidance from their business consultants. SBDC also connected them with master’s students who made a project out of BWH’s inventory challenge, and the Paluzzis joined the SBDC’s CEO Xchange, a group of business owners from a variety of industries who meet regularly to discuss challenges and share best practices.
From their mentors they learned to “find your (individual) strengths and help lift one another up with those strengths. The foundation of your partnership is so important to the health of your business,” Carlie says. Another big lesson learned — the hard way — was how to say no to opportunities outside the core business. Early on, the team jumped at the chance to work on experiential events with a theme park and a luxury goods brand, but it was a major strain on the small team and outside their main mission: selling plants online.
To anyone considering starting a business, Carlie adds: “Don’t let the fear of the unknown or that you might not be an expert on this hold you back. Dip your toe in, start it as a side hustle, and see if it’s a passion project that can be built into something more.”
WHAT’S NEXT:
In addition to expanding BWH’s direct-to-consumer product line with more rare and exotic plant varieties, Carlie Paluzzi, left, Jason Paluzzi and Kyle Kroeplin are focused on growing their wholesale business by partnering with more boutique shops and garden centers and working on getting BWH’s signature potting mixes into big-box retailers.