Keeping To An Amazon Theme,

I had no idea that succulents were such big business for them,

I took this picture of some of them when we were in Santorini, for most of the 20th century, succulents were an afterthought for professional nurseries, and not all that profitable, but they have become the living ornaments of today’s idealized homes, gardens, and workspaces and, subsequently, the central characters in a new gardening movement that values ease over effort, and Amazon's involvement? it launched a pilot program in 2016 that allowed customers to buy houseplants, some of which come potted, and have them delivered via Prime in just two days, today it is one of the major players in selling succulents with over 1,000 sellers, and offers more than 100,000 live plants and seeds on its website, 

but for the biggest seller you have to go to Altman Plants, it is the indisputable wholesale king of the succulent market, employing 3,331 people and selling tens of millions of plants each year, while the typical grower has three to five acres of production land, Altman owns about 500 just in San Diego, including 2 million square feet of greenhouse space, if you want to read more about this amazing plant's rise from a hardly wanted plant to being a huge seller have a look here at this article that charts it's meteoric rise in popularity, and grab a coffee, it really is a fascinating read.