LG Tiiun helps you out with plant cultivation

Many of you may be afraid to grow plants home or at work because you are unlikely to keep them alive when you want to grow flowers or vegetables. You sometimes forget to water them or give them too much water, which causes your plants to wither. 　

LG Electronics’ smart plan growing device “Tiiun” meets such demands. All you have to do is choose seeds of flowers, vegetables or herbs that you want to grow out of 20 types of plants and put them in the shelves of the device. It helps you see how plants grow for four to eight weeks.

LG Tiiun targets a segmented group of consumers. “We expected at first that mid-aged women will be the main target but it turned out that we got the same amount of attention from men and women according to an analysis of those who responded to the device’s ads,” said Lee Hyun-ji, head of LG Electronics’ new business marketing team. “There may be a high demand for mental healing that comes from observing seeds growing to fruition when you come back home after long hours’ work in a dreary office,” she said.

It was not an easy journey for an electronics maker to grow plants. Lim Ki-young, a senior researcher of LG’s kitchen appliance research center, played a key role in developing the LG Tiiun. He said that he reached out to the Rural Development Administration (RDA), seed companies and horticulture professors to seek their advice on quality of plants that are grown in the device along with efforts to ensure the quality of the device itself.

The key lies in creating an environment that can ensure similar conditions as the natural environment to help plants grow. “Different plants in the RDA’s catalog require different conditions for growth in terms of period of a year or season,” said Lim explaining that LG Electronics applied technology to make environments in the device similar to natural conditions such as temperature, sunlight and air currents so that plants can grow indoors regardless of season.


will@donga.com