General Hydroponics announces sale to Hawthorne Group / Scotts Fertilizer

Just saw this press release. Anybody know more about this?

http://globenewswire.com/news-relea...al-Hydroponics-and-Bio-Organic-Solutions.html

NEW YORK, April 2, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Hawthorne Gardening Company announced today that it has taken a major next step in building a portfolio of brands to serve the needs of indoor and urban gardeners.

Hawthorne, through its subsidiary Hawthorne Hydroponics LLC, has purchased the business of General Hydroponics, Inc. and Bio-Organic Solutions, Inc. The liquid nutrients and growing media products manufactured by these California based companies are marketed under the General Hydroponics and Vermicrop brands, respectively. Hawthorne also owns leading niche organic gardening brands such as EcoScraps® and Whitney Farms® and is a partner with AeroGrow International, a leading manufacturer of hydroponic gardening equipment for consumers.

Founded in 2014, The Hawthorne Gardening Company is dedicated to creating high-quality gardening products that empower people to garden no matter where they live or how they choose to grow.

"The trend of urban and indoor gardening is accelerating by the day and we're excited to quickly be emerging as the company that is meeting the unique needs of these consumers," said Chris Hagedorn, general manager of Hawthorne. "The addition of General Hydroponics and Vermicrop to our family of brands is an important step in our history and speaks to our commitment in this space. Our access to capital and technology will allow us to take these outstanding businesses to an even higher level.

"As a family-led business, we're excited and proud to welcome the Brooke family and all of the General Hydroponics and Vermicrop associates to our team. We look forward to building upon their legacy of serving specialty retailers and providing them and their consumers the high quality products that have become synonymous with these brands."

Ross Haley, CEO and co-founder of Vermicrop, will continue to oversee both brands and will remain based in California. All manufacturing operations will remain in place.

"When we were searching for a partner to take our business to the next level we weren't looking for who could write the biggest check," Haley said. "Our family wanted a partner who shared our values and shared our vision. We found that with Hawthorne and we're excited to start the next chapter in our business."

Wow. Hopefully nothing changes in the Flora Series nutes.

whoa!!!

I'd find a new company. Hell with Scott's poison.

Buckwheathulls said:

I'd find a new company. Hell with Scott's poison.

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I think I agree... I may have to start up some side by sides again and find a new blend.

Underhanded big business.....

They created a subsidiary to hide the fact they are scotts......

I suspect that scotts know that their name with cannabis growers is like poison.....


So the need to create the Hawthorn business name....


Anyone care to count how many times 'Scotts' is found in the original pr?????


SOme years ago...scotts bought out peters fertilizers.....





At the time peters had the cleanest ferts on the market.....


Soon after scotts bought them ..... peters formulas were about equal to miracle grow......

another reason to get off the bottled junk!

Buckwheathulls said:

I'd find a new company. Hell with Scott's poison.

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Cannavore said:

another reason to get off the bottled junk!

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I couldn't agree more!

Sad truth is most people would be shocked who owns who when a company is incorporated you can have like 10 companies under that company but different names HERE is good one FUTURE SHOP still remains the name yet BEST BUY OWNS THEM
same thing applies with food manufacturing companies but some how it gets leaked out possibly from top end employees that get laid off or fired ,,
Remember back when you watched The Matrix for the first time and ran down to the store to buy sunglasses and a trench coat? There were so many sunglass brands to choose from: Oakley, Ray-Ban, Revo, Vogue, DKNY, and if you must have only the best, $500 designer glasses from Prada and BVLGARI (which has that V-instead-of-a-U thing, so you know it's classy like ancient Rome). All sunglasses are made by luxottica
Well, at least you get to pick between stores, right? If the people at the LensCrafters are being dicks while selling you different glasses all made by Luxottica, you can show them what you think of that by taking your business across the mall to the Pearle Vision. Or maybe the Sears or Target optical departments. Except that they are also all owned by Luxottica. Just for the sake of argument let's say that you're not a squinty-eyed nerd, so you pass by the prescription shops and go right to the Sunglass Hut. You guessed it. Luxottica.

Like an omnipresent starchy deity, corn is everywhere. Savvy consumers know that it doesn't just stop at corn on the cob. Word has gotten out that corn syrup turns up in almost every candy and soda, and is as addictive as crack. But how about Febreze? Hand sanitizers? Ethanol car fuel? That's all corn, too. Making rubber tires? You'll need corn starch. Spark plugs? Corn. Drywall? Corn. You can't build a car or a house without corn.
Whoever controls the corn controls ... maybe not the universe, but a lot of money. And the king of American corn is Monsanto, a biotech company. Unlike evil movie biotech companies -- with their dubious business models of inventing mutants or viruses that kill everyone -- Monsanto built their empire on a pretty boring one two punch: weed killer and seeds.
The weed killer, Roundup, is the biggest selling herbicide in the world. The seeds are genetically engineered corn seeds that are immune to Roundup. If you want to grow corn and kill weeds that hurt the corn, Monsanto has the best product on the market by a mile. That's why 80 percent of all corn planted in the U.S. goes into the ground with Monsanto's trademark on it.
But plants will be plants, and make more seeds, so the farmers don't have to keep buying Monsanto seeds year after year, right? Don't be silly. Monsanto's not going to let their money run away like that. Their first plan was to incorporate something called a "Terminator" (otherwise known as the "let's just stop pretending we're not evil") gene that automatically sterilizes the plant so it can't make any more seeds. Then farmers have to buy new seeds every time they plant, just like nature intended.

People objected to this quite a bit for some reason, forcing Monsanto to back down and instead just make farmers sign a contract saying that they won't use the seeds the plants make ... or else. So instead of screwing farmers with a terminator gene, they're just asking the farmers to agree to screw themselves.

So the next time you're deciding between a Coke or a Pepsi (or between a Firestone or a Goodyear), know that whichever way you go, you're buying Monsanto. You're welcome!

I guess its time to go to Jacks Classic mixes. They arent affected by the Scott buy of
Peters- making pretty good stuff in Allentown. KISS growers probably need to look at
their stuff now.

Jacks 5-12-26 and calcium nitrate are used by many here.....

DrFever said:

Sad truth is most people would be shocked

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you can do this with dishwashing liquid as well.. name a brand.. check the label, all the same..

Well I guess I'll use the rest of the Gen Org nutes I have on hand. Now that they've sold their soul to Satan, I'll look elsewhere. Just need something easy for Moms, etc. Probably just stay with EJ all the way thru. -granger

Now I may sound like living on the dark side of the moon but who's Scott?

And if you're so against big corporations, why not grow organic? I mean really ecology-friendly, sustainable, fair-trade organic, not that crappy OMRI label stuff and certainly not hydroponics indoors (guess where the plastic, the bulbs, the electricity, the RO and other instruments come from). Best would be as autarkic farmer somewhere up in the Himalayas (and make sure to blow up the only dirt track to the next village 50 km downhill)...

Scott's, poisoning the world one yard at a time. lol

Scotts = big agro chemical company of unscrupulous integrity, right up there with Monsanto and DuPont.

But you know that BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Dow, Monsanto, and Syngenta are the big five in agrochemicals? DuPont and Monsanto are just the leading seed manufacturers. DuPont is a lot more present in the everyday life, such as nylon stockings... and they are way up the Toxic 100 (Wiki link in German because the English one lists no companies). Good luck avoiding them or were you ready to trash your computer, your cell phone, your car, your house, your wife (she might love cloths and cosmetics and certainly would mind going out without them... ehh... going out of what, without a house?), your life, your everything??

I'm about to buy a 20 year supply of the Flora Series before the formula changes. Hopefully it doesn't go bad storing it.

LoL!

To scare some of you even more, here something from Greenpeace: CLICK
Spinosad, the new hype in 'clean' insecticides is on that list too, it's a Dow product...

Only Ornamental said:

But you know that BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Dow, Monsanto, and Syngenta are the big five in agrochemicals? DuPont and Monsanto are just the leading seed manufacturers. DuPont is a lot more present in the everyday life, such as nylon stockings... and they are way up the Toxic 100 (Wiki link in German because the English one lists no companies). Good luck avoiding them or were you ready to trash your computer, your cell phone, your car, your house, your wife (she might love cloths and cosmetics and certainly would mind going out without them... ehh... going out of what, without a house?), your life, your everything??

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I'm aware because I've been in the industry for 30 years but alternative products are growing exponentially so it's not going to be long before real reform and more organic sustainable products become available.

Their days are numbered as can be seen by the dwindling profits of monsanto and the likes. Organic will be the new, petrochemicals are the old way whether anyone likes it or not is irrelevant to our ecosystem.