The Pencil That Grows Into a Plant (Yes, Really!)

This brow pencil is a 100% natural FSC-certified wood, which means for every tree we cut down, we have to plant at least 1 or 2 other trees instead. From 1 single tree, we can produce 175,000 pieces of brow pencils, meaning we take 1 tree, we make 175,000 pieces of brow pencils, we potentially plant 175,000 cherry tomatoes or spruce trees or forget-me-nots. It's really circular in all senses.

Hello and welcome to the Conscious Design Podcast.

I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and I help turn product ideas into sustainable 7-figure businesses.

Join me for another episode where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy.

Today, I'm really excited to have Michael Strassholm. He's the CEO and founder of Sprout World. They are a certified B Corp and they create innovative, sustainable products like the world's first Plantable pencil that you're holding right now, which grows into herbs, vegetables, and flowers after use. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, uh, Ian.

Yeah, so I'm excited to dive into everything that you're doing, but I would love to first jump back in time a little bit to origination of this. How did you decide to found a company where you make plantable pencils?

Great question. Actually, the idea originates from MIT in Boston, where 3 young students came up with the idea of a pencil you can plant, and they put it on Kickstarter.com, the crowdfunding site, where I noticed it and thought it was a great idea because back then in 2000— early 2013, Everyone was talking about sustainability, but no one could really put words to what that meant, which is actually pretty much like today. It's still a very fluffy word, right? But I was doing a lot of speaking, workshops and so on, talking about sustainability. And I thought it was a great product to illustrate what sustainability was all about. The thing that you take a product and you use it for one thing, in this case, uh, riding, and then instead of throwing it out, you literally give it new life by planting it. And that to me was what sustainability was, was all, uh, all about. So, uh, I made a deal with these, uh, 3 young students, uh, to sell and distribute in Europe. And pretty, pretty soon, uh, it took off a lot in Europe. We were selling a lot. Then I made a deal with the, with the students to, uh, acquire the patent behind The Sprout pencil, as well as the global rights, and they moved on to two other projects. Thing was that they were robotics engineers at MIT, so they were dreaming about building a robot that could make pencils you can plant. They were not actually dreaming about pencils you can plant. That was more my thing. So I took over and acquired it, and they're all three working now for big robotic companies in the U.S. and. Really happy, and we stay in touch.

Amazing! It's funny that robotics guys came up with students came up with the idea for a pencil. Let's talk a little bit. So obviously, it has popularity, right? You're selling, and you're selling globally, correct? Yeah, correct.

We've sold it in the last eleven years. We've sold more than eighty million pieces of brow pencils globally. About twenty percent of that is in the U.S.

Amazing. And I took a look at the website. You have a lot of cool— it comes with some pretty simple packaging, easy. I love the idea. I guess, where is your biggest— is this something that's more promotional material? Like, is that kind of— who are your biggest buyers? Who's the most interested in, in this concept?

Originally, many years ago when we launched, or when I launched, I thought it would be a retail or maybe school products. Really?

Oh yeah.

And when we launched in Denmark, actually as the first country in the world, it was almost all in retail. It was museums, especially selling in their shops and getting their museum names and messages engraved. But pretty soon I started to get inquiries from corporations, from companies that wanted to buy the Sprout pencils to have their messages, uh, their logos engraved on the, or printed on the pencils to promote their own, uh, messages, uh, oftentimes, uh, sustainable messages or, or using for conferences, uh, in hotels and, and, and so on. So today, actually about 75 to 80% of our business is, uh, to the promotional industry, to companies using it, uh, to, to promote their, their own agendas. And the last 20% is on Amazon direct to consumers where we sell the different editions as basically mainly gift editions. So people are buying a pack of 5 Sprout pencils, a Mindful Edition or Happy Bee Edition to use as a gift. But it's about 80, 75 to 80% is promotional corporate business.

Interesting.

Yeah, I was, I was kind of thinking along the lines of what you were first thinking about, oh, maybe schools, museums, but mostly basically like anywhere that might have a single use or seeming very easily taken pencils and stuff like that might be the main thing. But it's, so it's interesting that it actually is the gifting. I would not have guessed gifting. I could, I could have guessed that corporate, corporate things would have, somebody would have gotten onto that. Yeah. But it's interesting that the gift side is your other, your other main area.

It's, it, it, it's big. Uh, and we see from, uh, we have a, a tremendous amount, uh, thousands of, uh, 5-star reviews on, on Amazon, fortunately. And we see a lot, uh, it's very often grandparents buying for their grandkids or parents, uh, for their kids, or it's students buying for their teachers. And it's all about when you give something, What you're giving is saying a lot about you as a person. So if you're giving something that is 100% natural, something that can be planted after use instead of throwing out, it's saying a lot about you as a giver. So I think that's why it resonates so much with people buying gifts.

Let's dive into— I know you guys are B-certified, you have a few other certifications around it. Let's dive into a little bit of like what— because most people, if you think about a pencil, they would go, oh, of course, a pencil, like if you— it's wood, like you stick it in the ground, it goes away. But there's also, you know, metal in it and there's eraser and there's things that make it not, not plantable, let alone turn into something else. So let's— can you talk a little bit about your certifications and then— How are you able to achieve this?

It's important to mention that the Sprout Pencil is 100% natural FSC-certified wood, which means for every tree we cut down, we have to plant at least 1 or 2 other trees instead. But also important to know that actually from 1 single tree, we can produce 175,000 pieces of Sprout Pencils. Meaning we take one tree, we make 175,000 pieces of Froud pencils, we potentially plant 175,000 cherry tomatoes or spruce trees or forget-me-nots out there. So it's really circular in all senses. The seed capsules are 100% vegan. It's cellulose-based material. The seeds, of course, are all natural, and we source everything locally, meaning in Europe, we source from Europe only and we produce in Europe only. We have production in the US also. So we try to keep it very local. We don't source from China or from places where we don't sell. for instance. That's very, very important to us. So, so yes, we have a lot of certifications and we're of course proud to be a B Corp because Corp is, it's about not being best in the world, but being best for the world. And that's very important to me and to us.

Yeah. And I know it's, I feel like I could have an episode with every company just about becoming a B Corp, the process.

It is.

And I know it's a lot of work, so it's not, it's not something lightly just started on a, on a Monday. It's, it's something that you put a lot of effort into going through.

It's a long process. We were first time certified in 2021. It was about a 6-month process where we were delivering and going through all our numbers and data and how we were doing things. And then another about 1 year where the B Corp was verifying our data and our numbers and so on. So it took almost 1.5 years. We just got recertified in 2024 because it's every 3 years. And fortunately, that was a little bit easier once we were in the system.

Well, that's good. Second time, second time's a little bit easier. I wanted to ask, so it has seeds in it. And there's a company I've heard of that is able to put seeds inside of cardboard. How are, if you can share, how are the seeds actually put? Is it in the paint that you put on or coating on it, or is it actually in the wood itself?

The sprout pencil has a small seed capsule made from cellulose at the end. Where you normally have an eraser. So what happens is that once you're done writing with your pencil, you have a stop left. You plant it in a pot. You just cover the seed capsule with soil and you water it. And the first time you water it, the seed capsule will dissolve. And then as you keep taking care of the plant, you water it. The seeds, the plant will start to grow from the pot.

That's awesome. And I noticed you guys have, you have the pencils is where you started, but you've expanded your product line a little bit from there. Could you talk about, you know, how, when did you decide to expand from just pencils and start going into other products?

We're holding this global patent for writing instruments you can plant. And some years back, uh, we were doing a brainstorm. We were talking about what other products, uh, could be considered, uh, writing instruments you can plant. And we are a company with a lot of, uh, female employees. So we were sitting in, in this brainstorm and one of the female employees was saying, uh, why don't we make, uh, makeup liners you can plant? And I said, that sounds like a horribly, horribly bad idea because how big is that, uh, that market? I mean, that cannot be very big. Uh, eyeliners, brow liners, lip liners, whatever. I think to mock me, uh, they started opening their, their bags and every, every single female employee had, uh, at least one lip liner or eyeliner in their bags. Uh, one of them had, uh, 6 or 7 different ones. And I started to look into the market and it's, it's a billion, uh, billion-dollar market. It's huge.

It's huge.

Much bigger than, uh, than normal pencils, of course. And so we decided to, uh, develop initially an eyeliner. We went to all the big, uh, we had discussions with everyone from L'Oréal to Estée Lauder to, uh, and so on. And they all loved the idea, but the development process was very, very long. I mean, they wanted to launch in 3, 4, 5 years. And me being me, I didn't have patience, uh, for that. So, uh, instead we went the other way around and we developed together with a German makeup manufacturer. We developed a 100% natural formula for an eyeliner, one which is actually allergy certified, meaning you cannot get allergies from our eyeliners, which is a big problem because once you touch your skin, a lot of people have allergies.

It's very sensitive too. Like, you can use something somewhere else, but you'll react to your eyes.

a lot of people will react to that. And strangely enough, there are almost no eyeliners, brow liners, and this kind of products that are allergy certified. It's very, very few products.

Interesting.

And so we managed to get that certification, allergy certified, which is very important. And then we launched it, the products, about 3, 4 years ago. It's still a small part of our business, Because we are, we are big in the promotional and the corporate business. But actually, we are going to, to relaunch probably later this year the whole makeup line. So that's, that's very exciting.

It's a very amazing—

it's a completely different market because it's not corporate, it's direct to consumers. It's a different kind of people buying, right? So it'll be very exciting.

I'd be curious to see and think maybe, maybe even corporate might be interested in, 'cause that's a very unique thing to give away, right? It's more, it's more unique in another way too. So I would assume, and maybe it's, maybe it's a wrong assumption, but I would assume at least some of the corporate side would be interested in having these as promotional material too.

And that's a real great observation because actually where we have sold the most of our makeup liners so far. Again, because we didn't have so much focus on retail yet. We are selling a little bit on Amazon, but not otherwise. But we actually sold a lot to corporate, also to cosmetic companies using it as in goodie bags or buy 2 products and get a Sprout eyeliner for free together with that, for instance.

Yeah, the promo. So kind of a promo material.

Exactly. But also actually because we have a lot of hotel customers, uh, like the Hilton, the Intercontinental, all these big chains. And, and, uh, we have, uh, hotel, uh, hotels that are buying for their shops also because when people, uh, women are traveling, maybe they forget their, their eyeliner so they can buy an all-natural one in the hotel shop.

Hey, it's your host, Ian.

I'm really glad you're enjoying this episode. I absolutely love highlighting amazing brands and founders for the awesome things they are doing. I've helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and businesses like yours turn their boldest ideas into powerful, purpose-driven brands. So if you're serious about building a brand people love, like our guests and clients do, and one that you're proud to stand behind, I invite you to dive a bit deeper with our book, Conscious Design. Inside, you'll discover the exact framework and steps we use to help entrepreneurs like you turn purpose into a powerful impact-driven brand, brand that stands out, attracts loyal customers, and drives sustainable growth with social and environmental responsibility woven into its DNA. Grab your copy today. You can find it on our website, consciousdesignhouse.com, or just find the link below in the show notes. Enjoy the rest of the episode and don't forget to like, subscribe, and share.

I feel like they all— almost all hotels will have a pencil and a pen in the room, and they always have those kinds of toiletries, right? All the stuff that you probably, probably forgot at home at some point, they do have. So that, that is awesome that they're, they're being able to offer that. That's a cool, a cool option to have.

Again, the hotel business is one of our biggest clients because they use in the, in the hotel rooms where before you had a plastic ballpen, now they have a Sprout pencil. A lot of hotels are doing conferences and events, so they're using it there. You know, you, you sit down for a conference, you get a notebook and a, and a pencil to, to take notes with, or they're using it as a, as a promotional item to promote the, the hotel, You get a Sprout pencil on your arrival, for instance, or at fairs and so on.

Right.

Well, and I'd imagine, you know, hotels, they have also been becoming more and more sustainable and thinking about that. So it matches. It's another way for them to say, hey, we have, we are thinking about even something as basic as the pen or pencil in your room.

Here's what—

amazing. You're relaunching the makeup line. Is it just eyeliners? I know there's a lot of different, like, how expansive are you making your makeup line? How, where does drawing you, where's the ends of drawing utensil where you're covered still?

The funny thing is that because we hold this global patent for writing instruments you can plant, in legal terms are considered writing instruments. Because you write on your your face.

So okay, what so writing and drawing basically writing and drawing are the kind of the same.

Okay, exactly, exactly. So so what is covered by our patent is lip liners, is brow liners and eyeliners, but actually also lipstick, which is oh really that we are working on. eventually. Problem with lipstick is that you have wooden pencils for lipstick, but they are thicker than normal pencils. So we are working to develop the capsules that will actually be big enough to fit on a lipstick.

Right. Okay. Yeah, those are a lot bigger. They're like double or more the size.

Exactly. And But, but the, the lipstick market alone is, I mean, humongous. It's, it's, it's a huge market.

Would you be able to do like lip balms then? Is that the— because they're usually kind of categorized the same as color, no color, or, well, even there's even lip balm with tints in it now too. So.

In, in, in principle, yes. Because also with a lip balm, it's, it's like drawing on your, on your lips. So it's, it's covered as well.

Yes.

Amazing.

I guess it's very interesting when you have a patent like that and then you start to explore and then you realize, oh wait, there's these, there's these other things that actually we could do with it and be able to make something cool that is protected still.

I think that's what happens when you work with innovation. You start in one place. In this case, it was, uh, fortunately a great success with the normal pencils. But, but then you start to look in other directions. You, you start to look at the market, you, you start to listen to, to, uh, your customers and, and, uh, your employees in, in my case. Uh, and, and then you, you, you suddenly start to go in, in, in other directions, but, but without going astray because we are staying within the the patent and what we are good at, which is writing instruments.

Well, that's amazing. So you have pencils, you have makeup, the ones that fit. Is there anything else that you can expand or that you are looking at expanding into? I think I saw you have pencil sharpeners even on your website.

Yes, we have supplementary or complementary products like notebooks, pencil sharpeners. We are looking at, uh, pencil erasers because when we developed the Sprout pencil, we, uh, we got rid of the, uh, eraser at the end and put a seed capsule. So we are looking at, at, uh, we also, uh, have done and, and still doing coloring books, for instance, because we have color pencils you can plant also.

Oh, okay.

But, but we try to stay within the, what complements, like, let's say the stationery side of, of, of business. But of course, over the years, we've become quite the experts on seeds and plants and how you can use them for different things. So we, of course, also are looking at what can we develop that has seeds in it.

Amazing.

So you have these, how have your products, I'm assuming that those go as well as, is it still I guess, are, are people interested in the notepads and kind of things like that as promotional too? Is that kind of blanketed as people see it all as really great promotional material?

I think so. For us, it's, it's more like an add-on. People don't buy notebooks from us alone. They, they buy Sprout pencils and then they buy, uh, the, uh, the, the notebooks to, to go with it. or they buy the pencil sharpeners to go with it. So people see us as a company with writing instruments and seeds and plants, and that's how we have grown so big.

Do you have any— I know you source the seeds locally, you're using local to wherever you're manufacturing and selling. I saw you have, you know, Herbs, flowers, plants, like, is there any kind of limit other than obviously the physical size of the seed? Kind of what kind of seeds can you put in there?

I mean, there are some limitations. The size of the seeds, as you mentioned, because the seed capsule is only so big. So there are certain seeds that are too big, for instance. The other thing that limits us is that we want seeds that germinate quite fast. After you plant it. So for instance, uh, let's say basil seeds or, or forget-me-not seeds or cherry tomatoes, sunflower germinates within 3, 4, 5 days after you plant the pencil, which is okay. Uh, for instance, back in the days we also did a lot of rosemary pencils with rosemary seeds. And, and rosemary is extremely popular in the Mediterranean here in, in Europe, for instance, in, in Italy, in Spain, in, in Greece and so on. Also parts of the US. But the problem with rosemary is that it takes 4 to 6 weeks before it starts to sprout, to germinate. And people don't have patience for that. People think the product's not working, it's taking too long. So we are by nature impatient people. So we want to see something happen pretty fast. And that's That's a limitation. So we, we test all the seeds, all the source that we are working with. We test them to make sure that they germinate fast. And, and that's, so that's a criteria also.

Right. 'Cause you have, it's gotta break down the, the cellulose shell and then, and then start germinating and you gotta do it in a timeframe someone would be excited about. I guess really you're, you're trying to make sure people are still excited. They're pulling it out early.

We also look at seeds, uh, in, in terms of, do they have a story? Is there something that you can, um, that you can, uh, talk about in, in, in terms of this specific seed? For instance, forget-me-not seeds, which is a beautiful flower, is a very, very popular sprout pencil, uh, because when you give something, someone a, a sprout pencil with forget-me-not seeds, you are sending a message to the receiver, please, uh, please don't forget me. Same with, with the basil. Basil is the most popular one we have because everyone knows how to use basil in, in, in cooking, whether it's pizza or pasta or, or whatever. Um, sunflower is a very, very popular seed also because sunflower is, is a beautiful, uh, yellow-orange flower that grows very big. And it symbolizes hope. For instance, we have done a project in Ukraine on the makeup liners with sunflower seeds because the sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine and it symbolizes hope.

Oh, I didn't know that. Amazing.

So we always look to, can they germinate fast? Is there a good story? And What can you use the flower or herb or vegetable for? We just recently launched chili because—

Oh, okay.

Chili is a great—

Everybody knows how to use that too.

Exactly. Everyone knows how to use it or not use a chili.

Right. I love that there's this extra layer to, you know, otherwise you just buy a pencil, right? But this has this extra layer of the seed, which you can really be thoughtful. You can, you know, even from like a corporate standpoint, you can put whatever message you want on it, but then it's also what's the seed going to become? And that's, it's kind of, it's this double layer of messaging that takes time where you gotta use a pencil and then you can, then you can plant it and see what comes out of it, which is, I think, a very— A unique thing to be able to do in terms of, especially from like a corporate gift or even a personal gift standpoint. It's like this double, double thing that you can do.

Exactly. And it's important that we are not considering ourselves a pencil company. A lot of people think that pencils are very old school and how many pencils are being sold, that cannot be that many and so on. But actually, it's more than 15 billion pieces of pencils being sold and produced every year. I think about 4 billion of them is in the United States alone. So, so the market is big, but, but you would never find a Sprout pencil side by side with a normal pencil. We are not selling a pencil. We are selling a messenger, a sustainable messenger. We are selling something you can plant. And it's much more about storytelling. And how can you tell your story with this brow pencil?

Right. I think that's an interesting point, and I'm glad you brought that up. But it is that people aren't thinking of it, which I, I think is a good thing, is you're not thinking of it as just a pencil. 'Cause otherwise you'd go, well, this pencil is so much cheaper, I can get whatever. But you are really focusing on, yeah, it happens to be a pencil, but that's not That's not its only job. It's not just there to be a writing instrument. It's to tell a story. So love that. I wanted to ask, because I know you've been through so many, so many different certifications and you've, you've done all these things. Obviously B Corp is like the hardest, big— biggest one I think that you guys have done. What's the next for you that's been not necessarily the hardest to do, but had the most impact? On how you think, what's that, what's the next one that you've impacted you guys the, the most?

I definitely think that in terms of recognition and what it's all about and what it covers is the B Corp certification because it, it, it's a 360 degrees look at how we do business, how we work with materials, how we produce and so on. That, that's definitely the, the, the biggest one. But I'm also very proud of the allergy certification for the makeup, for instance, because that's very rigorous also. For instance, certain colors on the lip liners could not be certified because they contained things that could not be allergy certified. So we had to drop, for instance, yellow eyeliner. Because the yellow color could under no circumstance be certified, and we wanted everything to be allergy certified. But also we are what is called CEDEX certified. CEDEX is an audit on your production facilities, which has been done to our facilities in both Europe and USA. Where CEDEX go into the production facility and they look at everything from salaries to how workers are treated to what are the conditions, everything around, and confirming that everything is good and that workers are treated the way they should be or even better. And that's— I worked in Asia for almost 15 years where I've seen conditions in factories that you won't believe. Horrible, horrible conditions. People not even being allowed to go to the restroom during their working hours and so on and so on. So I'm very proud that we are producing only in Europe and only in the US where people are paid much more than minimum wage. They are treated like Normal people makes a big difference for me.

Amazing.

Well, yeah, all those, and, and you have so many, but those, I, those are all 3 really great. And I would never have guessed the, when you said that most eyeliners are not certified, that is kind of a, a crazy thing for me to think that, that most aren't there. And that yellow, like color is such a huge component to whether you can even be certified or not.

The thing about the makeup business is that a lot of makeup brands, they claim to be sustainable, they want to be sustainable, but at the end of the day, they're not really concerned about it because it's expensive, it's troublesome, it's a lot of effort and so on. The beauty business is about selling a lot of lip liner and makeup and cream, skincare and so on and so on. It's more about pretty faces than it's about actually making a difference, unfortunately. But that's something that we would like to change, of course.

Yeah, I'm excited to see, because it's, now you have makeup with an extra story of the seed as well. I think it's a very, I think it's going to be very interesting. So hopefully your launch, when you relaunch, you're able to give even more attention because it's definitely a space It needs more disruption. So that's amazing. You guys are going to be able to tackle that.

I hope so. The problem for us also with the beauty business is that all small brands are up against the very, very big ones that use millions and billions of dollars and euros in marketing alone. But yes, yes, we'll get around that.

Absolutely. Well, it's been a pleasure. It's been great chatting with you about what you guys are doing and your products and The story to be told with those. And before we wrap up, I do want to make sure for anybody that wants to reach out, connect with you, partner, what is the best way to contact you guys? And just anything else you want to add before we wrap up?

Oh, definitely go to our website, sproutworld.com, or maybe visit our brand store at amazon.com. Way, just look up Sprout World and then you'll find all the products.

Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate your time and look forward to seeing more of your makeup around the world.

Thank you, Ian. It was my pleasure.

And that wraps up another episode of the Conscious Design Podcast. If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to life and turn it into a sustainable 7-figure business, Visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below. Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and I'll see you on the next episode.