We exhibited at Cultivate'26 in mid-July. Rather than hand out a brochure and hope, we walked people through the actual software at the booth — real screens, real workflows, whatever the person in front of us wanted to see.
At the booth
Alongside the live walkthrough we ran short product loops on holographic fan displays, which turned out to be an excellent conversation starter. People stopped to figure out what they were looking at, and then stayed to ask what the software did.
We also brought the usual table of useful things, plus one that was not so usual:
- Chapstick, hand sanitizer, and mints
- Business cards
- Coasters that grow flowers if you plant them
The coasters were the clear winner. There is something fitting about handing a grower something that grows.
What growers told us
One theme came up far more often than any other: growers are not happy with their current point-of-sale systems, and a lot of them are actively looking to replace them. This was not a case of us asking about POS and getting polite answers. It came up unprompted, from different operations, repeatedly.
Point of sale is now on the roadmap
We heard it enough times that we have added point of sale to the GrowerLive roadmap. To be clear about where this stands: it is a roadmap item, not a shipped feature, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. But it is the kind of gap we would rather close inside the platform than leave our partners to bridge with another vendor and another integration.
If POS is a live problem for your operation, we would genuinely like to hear how you work today. Those conversations are what shape the thing we end up building.
Inventory is the first wall, not the last
Something else the show reinforced. Inventory tracking is almost always the first place a growing operation hits a wall — it is the point where spreadsheets and institutional memory stop being enough. That is where most conversations about software begin.
But it is rarely where the opportunity ends. Once inventory is under control, the same operation usually discovers that ordering, shipment planning, merchandising accountability, and container utilization were all quietly costing them time too. The first wall is the one everybody sees. The rest is where a lot of the value turns out to be.
The best part was the people
The thing we did not expect to be the highlight was how friendly the show was. We spent three days meeting the range of businesses that serve this industry — growers, brokers, suppliers, and service providers who all keep this thing running — and came away genuinely encouraged about the people in it.
Thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth, asked hard questions, and told us what is actually broken. If we did not get to finish a conversation with you, we would like to. Reach out and we will pick it back up.