How to get new sport to marketplace?

[ThisIsMelissa]

Last year, I had a few hostas that looked like they might be sporting into something unique.

So, I'm wondering, say I was to grow these for a few seasons and they look like they are good growers.

What do you do to introduce your plant into the marketplace? I've heard of people selling plants to nurseries and they TC them,etc. I saw a lot of folks at the convention last year carrying plants around to see if Gary or Bob or Mark was interested in them.

What are the steps? Is there a guide to this kinda thing?
I don't foresee myself doing this anytime soon, but I'm wondering how it all works?

And if you can originate something special, what kind of ballpark dollar figure is normal for this kinda thing?

[Chris_W]

Hi Melissa,

This is a really tough thing to do since there aren't many companies actually doing this sort of thing, so competition is tight for lab space these days.

First, the sport really should be something special to get any attention. If it is really, really cool, unique, and totally different from anything else out there then places might compete for your attention. If it is really nice, but not that different from other plants out there, chances are that nobody will take it.

Now, if it is in between "just nice" and "mind blowing", the next step is to actually try to get someone to look at it. If you know people directly in the business you can take a plant to them to look at for consideration, or you can email pictures of the plant around to people for an opinion. You might enter it in regional competitions to get some buzz going - First Look often gets a lot of exposure, for example.

So you've done the promoting and have established that people like the plant and want it. So you go to the handful of places doing this sort of thing and have to pitch it to each. LIke I mentioned, if it is "mind blowing" there will be offers to produce it. Q & Z (Mark Zilis) does not pay royalties, so if they decide to produce the plant, you earn the recognition, nothing more. If other places produce it you can negotiate a royalty, I tend to see $0.10 to $0.50 per plant. Any more than that you could inflate the price too high. If it takes off and the market really likes it, heck, depending on the grower they might sell 5,000 to 10,000 a year (a guess). If it is a slow seller maybe they might sell 500 to 1,000 per year. So you won't get rich from just one plant in one season. If you manage to release a few plants over time then it can add up a little.

Sports don't seem to gain as much attention vs. hybrids. The labs out there could just put a plant in TC and will eventually get the same sport you are seeing. If the plant you have that sported is common there is a good chance the sport has already occurred somewhere else.

I have one plant that I managed to get into TC, and it wasn't easy. I have others that I tried to have CUSTOM produced, meaning I pay the labs to produce a set number of plants just for me, and I pay their full asking price to do it, and still couldn't get people to touch them. Finally I now have two plants being produced by a lab that I'm paying them to do, so I'll only make money if and when I sell those plants. And I have one plant being produced that a lab will sell.

Be prepared for rejection - it happens most of the time.

Finally, the timeframe you are looking at is a long one. For example, my Hosta 'Radiant Star' was discovered in 2005. It went to a lab in 2007, I got plants in 2009, and it is on the market now for 2011. 6 years is pretty quick actually! Another plant that I'm getting done was discovered in 2004 and the TCs should be on the market in 2012, and I should have plants of those for sale in 2014. So that is a 10 year turnaround.

My best advice - don't count your chickens until they've hatched. Get some pictures of your plant out there, at least email it to a few people, to judge the response. Then go from there

Hope that helps a little?

Chris

[Scuba Dude]

Chris really hit the nail on the head with this one. I couldn't have said it better.

Kent

[scootersbear]

Your name makes a big difference as well. One of those names you mentioned hasn't put anything out decent (mostly junk) in years but because his name is big in the business he gets priority so make yourself known. Join the clubs and such. Another option is do what I've done because I have no other option, learn to TC yourself. It's really not hard, it isn't rocket science. Almost everything needed can be bought at Hobby Lobby or a grocerie store. Plus a pressure cooker. Don't waste your money on buying a kit. The most important thing is keeping everything sterile. You won't be able to produce what they can but you can produce a few.

[viktoria]

Two comments to add:

I would not do anything with a sport for several years, during which time would divide it each year or two to make sure it is stable and does not revert back to the mother plant. The TC labs want a very high percentage of true-to-type plants or they won't touch it.

Having done TC in a lab, I would not dream of doing it at home!

Viktoria

[scootersbear]

Takes no more area than your stove top. It's not messy since your trying to avoid it being messy. Cost less than $20 to do approx 1000 and most of that cost is startup which would take anybody a long time to do individually. Takes around an hour to do around 20. I can see where in a large commercial TC lab would make it seem more than what it really is and make it feel intimidating but it's sooo simple. I really don't know why more people aren't doing it on their own. You can get directions on how all over Utube and google. Last summer I did of one of mine with around 80% success rate. I also tried another one of my streaked with a rate of about 90% ( I got better at it the second time around) unfortunitely they ended up all green but I expected that with the hopes maybe one would be streaked. Intimidating yeah I can see that. Hard, messy, takes up a lot of space, cost a lot!!! NO WAY... I wouldn't say it's easier than growing seeds but it take a lot less time, getting those seeds out of the pods is a pain and time consuming. If you can do that you can TC.

[viktoria]

I am glad it works for you, scootersbear!

I did it in college, not a large lab. I do not know how you can do it for twenty bucks, nor how you can do it without a laminar flow setup. Maybe your house is a whole lot cleaner than mine? Another possibility is that the clean, dry air in CO carries far fewer contaminants.

Viktoria

[jgh]

hey, Melissa... I'll have an article in the next AHS Journal entitled "So You Think You Have The Next Hot Hosta" that attempts to give an introduction to the ballpark. The more I investigated, the murkier it all got... but I think it is a useful primer... Anybody know when it will be out? I don't want to circulate it ahead of publication...

[Marlys]

Jim

The first edition of 2011 "The Hosta Journal" is the spring edition. Since our weather shows no signs or symptoms of allowing any thought of spring arriving, who knows when THJ will arrive. That has always been a problem with the magazine. You never knew when it was suppose to show up. However, now there is a new and improved plan for more predictable, more timely arrival of THJ in your mail box.

Watch your mail box in April. Since the publication is free with your AHS membership and since it is done 100% by volunteer service, it is hard to complain too much or too loudly about it. It is a really nicely done publication.

The new plan is spring edition - April, summer edition (in the summer)June, fall edition (AHS national convention edition) should be September but it premeired in December this year. Again, all volunteer staff doing a great job! Usually I look at my summer edition in the winter as who has time when the garden is growing to actually sit down and read? Not me! I have really been enjoying the new on-line version of THJ. And Josh says it will be archived and thus available on a continued basis.

Hey, did you get any snow in the Chicago area lately?

MM

[thy]

Marlys I love you, please come vissit my country, your

..... is the spring edition. Since our weather shows no signs or symptoms of allowing any thought of spring arriving, who knows when THJ will arrive.

Willl for sure send all magazine directors to a menthal hospital

Do you hear the German drums ... here the date is the important thing, not finished is not a possibillity, the date say it is finished, so it is
i would have loved to have be alowed that great mentality, but here you have a preorderd time with printing and didtribution.. so you have to yell at people and kick them if yo must.

Thanks once again and as you say it is darn uninteresting if it arrive Monday or Friday next week-
We do not have any signs of spring exept some crocus leafs....... hey, that is a sign of spring

[Linda P]

The only sign of spring here is the robins shivering in the branches of the crab apple trees...and they have to sit about mid-way up the tree to get above the snowdrifts.

Jim, I'll be looking forward even more to the next issue of THJ! I don't really care when it comes, as long as it gets here sometime. I know that everyone who works on it is generously donating huge chunks of time to it.
Melissa, I don't have a bit of advice for you, but wish you the best of luck, and hope your sports come back this year. I have a few I'm watching myself, and if they come back, this is the year I will separate them and grow them on alone to see how they do. Nothing earthshaking, but it's really fun to see them.

Linda P

[renaldo75]

Good to see it written out, Chris. I know you know how it works.

I'll be interested in reading your article, Jim.

The only sport that I had that I thought was cool was a wide margined division of Regal Splendor.
2 leaves/one division - in the deepest shaded of my garden. I couldn't NOT look at it every chance I got.
And then summer arrived and those 2 leaves scorched - in the deepest shade in my garden - and the next year
that sport eye looked just like all the rest...

When I was first getting into hostas, I was sport crazed. I used to look very hard at the hostas in the Omaha
nurseries hoping to find a sport. Never did. Then a few years ago a friend took me to see Tony Wong's garden.
[Amazing garden - no tags but he knows every plant there and where he got it..] He happened to mention
that Tony would visit every nursery 2-3 times a week 'sport fishing'. That explained that.

Finally thought I found a Striptease that was 'doing something' and spent way too much for it. Planted it and it looked
just like any other Striptease for years. Totally bummed about it. Then I changed the garden it was in and divided it into
10 divisions and rowed it out. Next year every one of them was streaked all over every leaf with a gold streaking.
I spent hours & hours photographing them and staring at them... Next year every one of them looked just like Striptease.

I've concluded that the 'sporting life' is not for me.

[redcrx]

That's funny, I googled 'Tony Wong' yesterday, looking for a web site and one of the results brought my to this forum a few years ago and you were discussing the same thing about sport fishing. I enjoy the sport also. Striptease variants seem to have two phases - the young "odd" look and then the "stable" normal look. When you break them up and "shock" them they go "odd" for a while and then back to normal (or whatever is normal for Striptease variants).

Here's one I ran into last season that may hold an "odd" look to it - it's Gypsy Rose.
The last shot is after I broke down the pot - except for the bigger plant at the right bottom - it's Striptease.
(I may have posted that last picture before.)

[renaldo75]

I wondered if anyone would remember me mentioning Tony Wong/me never finding a sport in Omaha.
It's kind of an out of body kind of experience when you google something and find yourself.

In Bob Solberg's talk on ploidy at Winter Scientific part of the discussion was about Dr. Ben Zonneveld's theory that
hostas have 3 layers of cells - not 2. And that the white layer in Striptease is the middle layer showing.

Here are my notes on that part of his talk:
Layers – Ben Zonneveld wrote a paper that was summarized in the Hosta Journal in 2007 in which he proposes that hostas have 3 layers of leaf cells rather than 2. Imagine a cross section of a hosta leaf that has been cut in half.

The border/margin of the leaf is L1 and covers the entire leaf, the ‘epidermis’ of the entire leaf, the outside of the scape, the outside of the flower, the outside of the anthers, it’s everywhere. Zonneveld refers to this layer as a ‘glove’.

L2 is fairly insignificant layer in the leaf and does not extend all the way to the edge of the leaf. [Example ‘Striptease’: the white line around the center is the L2 layer showing through.] It is the layer that determines the pollen and the gametes [eggs], so the L2 layer determines what the seedlings will look like, but we rarely see it.

L3 layer is the center of the leaf and the roots are only L3.

Even if the L1 and L3 are different ploidy, the L2 is usually the same ploidy as the L3. “So we can think of it as having 2 layers still and get away with it.” Looking at the center of the plant usually determines what the seedlings will look like. L1 is just one layer of cells thick. L2 is also one layer of cells. The L3 is 3 or 4 layers of cells thick.

[ThisIsMelissa]

We had Rob Mortko come talk at the MN Hosta Society meeting last April and he shared a very similar talk.
Interesting, but over my head!

[redcrx]

Hi Ren, I know the feeling. I was pokeing around on the web a while back and found one of my hosta pages was referenced by Melessia on another forum. I saw the picture and thought "boy that looks familiar" - http://crab.rutgers.edu/~mchugh/Hosta%2 ... 0Wave4.htm - I'm fascinated by Striptease sports.

That is interesting about the "white" line showing through and raises some questions. There is also a thread running about "Second Coming" and white lines running amuck or all the veins being white.

And some of the other oddities in hosta:

[renaldo75]

I thought the theory about the middle layer showing through was interesting.
I'd never heard that before. I'll be interested to know what they find out about the white veining.