Goodbye from Bloomtime Design

We’re a student-led venture at DU called Bloomtime Design. Our experience in starting this company up in the past two years has been unexpected and unique; things didn't go as we had hoped. We came to a fork in the road with pivoting down one path and closing doors down the other. The hardest part about this decision for us was coming to understand that the traction we made in spring was notable but not significant enough. And with that, here are our parting words.

A thank you letter, from Bloomtime Design.

Bloomtime Design was always about using the power of good design to unlock and de-mystify good landscaping for normal people. Our community has always been of great importance to us, and we want you to know that you are deeply appreciated.

We, in trying to democratize good and sustainable landscaping, connected homeowners to landscape designers and helped facilitate that interaction. We found the designers and the clients, and custom-designed our process to suit the needs of both of our customers. We actually went through a couple of ‘models’ trying to find the right balance… It’s a fairly classic startup model, arbitrating a transaction. Lyft, AirbnB, Havenly, Postmates, Taskrabbit, and in some ways Amazon (to name a few) all are middlemen in a transaction and (presumably) create value for all sides.

While at our core, we are facilitating a transaction between a designer and a client, for us it’s always been about more than that. Bloomtime was about the environment, about our clients’ experience with their landscape, our relationship to ecological systems in our cities, urban heat islands, water quality, flood mitigation, and alarmingly good looking yards. In trying to accomplish all of that, we managed to put great designs into the hands of real clients, making sure the designs were tailored to the individual site and client. We are extremely proud of that and have learned a lot along the way.

The biggest thing we learned is that great design is great for some people, but, crucially, it’s not great for a lot of people. From talking to hundreds of real people and trying out many different iterations of our business, we were faced with a hard truth. Design is great, but getting the project done is a bigger, more difficult thing. We were solving a problem in our industry, but we weren’t solving the problem. Faced with that hard truth, we took a page from Sir Robin’s book and bravely ran away. We were unable to line up the timing, team, vision, and business model. So, instead of starting up, we shut it down.

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It is with heavy hearts that we share this news today. But don’t be surprised to see more great things from us in the future, especially if it involves a source of joy for a lot of people.

Thank you,

Bloomtime Design

(Bill Flanigan + Josh Hoeg + Meier Werthan)

Hear more about Bloomtime Design at the Pioneering Summer Demo Day on Sept. 17th at 2 p.m. Add it to my schedule.