Shaker Seed Company

[A] The company created innovations in the marketing of seeds – including distributing, packaging and cataloging – all of which changed the horticultural business model forever.

Historian D. A. Buckingham states that Joseph Turner of Watervliet assigned about two acres of land in 1790 for the purpose of raising vegetable seeds to sell for an income.

The Shaker seed business stemmed from their rural agricultural roots and sold mostly to small villages and farming communities in the northeastern United States.

[4][11] In 1800 over 44 pounds of a variety of vegetable seeds sold, including mangelwurzel blood beet, carrot, cucumber, and summer squash, begetting $406 in income.

[12] The Shakers are credited with developing the idea of putting seeds in small paper envelope-style packets to sell to the general public.

[13][D][15][E] They introduced the innovation of placing tiny seeds in small paper envelopes bearing printed planting instructions for best results as well as storage and sometimes cooking suggestions.

[4] Specific machines were made early in the nineteenth century to speed the process of cutting and printing the packets.

[18] The small paper envelope packets filled with seeds were boxed in colorful wooden displays made by the Shakers and marketed throughout the United States in the nineteenth century.

[19] General stores throughout the United States displayed these wooden boxes with various seed envelope packet "papers" – as the Shakers called them.

[18] Shaker vendors had routes throughout the nation, many times a long distance from their home, but concentrated in the northeastern United States.

[18] Typically, the Shaker peddlers would deposit the wooden boxes of seed packet "papers" to the general stores in the spring on consignment and then in the fall gather them back up with their share of sales.

Improved cheaper transportation methods opened the rural markets to the city commercial seed vendors, and competition then came about.