This Autumn has been fantastic and has, in some ways, helped to improve the plant sales for the year. Certainly it’s been a cracking August, September and October (so far!).
Now more than ever it’s important to have your customer flow, merchandising and POS looking sharp. Although a good October will never make up for a good May it can still be a very lucrative time of year with customers looking for bigger specimens and nice topiary perhaps.
So keep it sharp and tidy.
Don’t forget to contact me if you need a hand or advice!

Shop Around

In horticultural retailing the norm seems to be to visit other garden centres to try to learn from, or improve on, what they are doing. Although we all know that this is certainly a helpful exercise it does tend to limit your ideas from a general retailing point of view. Most good ideas don’t come from garden centres but from high street (or these days retail park) shops. Yet when have you ever heard of a group of garden centres descending on a group of non-gardening retailers en masse to try to learn from, discuss and apply what they are doing? I think it’s the exception rather the norm.
I this day and age it is no longer good enough to just look at the best retailers in gardening, we also need to look into the best retailers in general. For example when did you ever visit an Aldi or Lidl? Too proud to walk through their doors? I bet your bank manager and his missus aren’t!
Open your eyes to more retailers. Check out the most profitable and pay them a visit. I guarantee you will learn at least one important thing from them.

Quote

Came across this quote recently and thought you might like to read it.

“It’s not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with the sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause and who, at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

(Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919, 26th US
President and 1906 Nobel Peace Prizewinner.)

A Rabbit Story with a Moral!

A while ago, when working with a garden centre with a pet shop I was dismayed to discover that for Easter, one of the busiest bunny selling periods, all they had for sale were a couple of large, plain, boring rabbits. I questioned the girl that was running the pet shop at the time and she informed me of the problem.
The policy at the time was to give suppliers as little as possible for their livestock so that the pet shop could remain as competitive as possible with a nice healthy margin.
Of course what this meant was that the suppliers would sell all their good stock to other pet shops who gave them more for their rabbits and left this place with whatever was left over.
We changed this around and gave the suppliers a fair price, and maybe a bit more, in return for the best they had and a guaranteed purchase of x amount of rabbits over the season.
Sales went up because we had beautiful bunnies (like the one in the picture here) and we sold tons of accessories.
I don’t think I need to point out the moral of the story. Do I? Nor does this only apply to bunnies!

Sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while. I’ve been a bit busy. Ye, I know it’s no excuse.

I was in Sofia in Bulgaria a week or so ago and I was struck by the contrast from shop to shop and person to person
There are high end shops selling the same items that available here and at much the same prices but also many shops selling basic stock at a fraction of the price for similar items here. It got me thinking about the contrast in some ex communist countries between the well of and the poor. Sure it’s in every country in the world but it’s incredible to see the disparity between rich and poor. In the Mall of Sofia you can buy a pair of sunglasses that are the equivalent of a months wages to some but only pocket money to others. Even inn the supermarkets there are big differences. I know that some of these places are catering for the tourists that are starting to roll in but it still seems strange to me. Any Bulgarians out there who would like to comment?

Last Hisory Lesson (for now)

The DIY stores or Sheds as they are called in the business (some what ironically seeing that most early garden centre shops started out as exactly that!) had one great pull for the customer. You could buy everything you needed for both inside the house and out in one location. With more people in a hurry and rushing from home to crèche then work and back it meant a saving of that most precious commodity of all. Time. The sheds were not in general any cheaper than garden centres, they carried less of a range and generally less full time horticulturists but that was not what the garden centres were competing against. Garden centres need another angle.
At this time, the early to mid nineties, garden centre operators in Ireland were travelling abroad more, especially to trade shows in the UK. On these trips owners and managers would often call into garden centres near the trade shows and by doing so they could see how the centres there had evolved into more than just a plant centre. They were full blown department stores selling everything from pets to gifts to clothing to hot tubs. We were all about to learn a new meaning for the word ‘destination’.
Destination centres have been around for a while, to put it simply, they are a places that when you get up on a Sunday morning and you need some retail therapy (as we all do from time to time, even us men!) you decide to go. Think of the in town shopping centres, out of town shopping centres and now of course, garden centres.
Suddenly garden centres realised that in order to survive, grow and differentiate themselves from the sheds they would need to expand into giftware, furniture, a restaurant, pet shop, christmas shop and many more departments and attractions. They also had to provide a better service and range than other retailers. Some of the best christmas shops and pet shops are now to be found in garden centres. The larger and more progressive centres are now competing not with the sheds but with, Liffey Valley, Blanchardstown Centre, White Water, etc.
It is fair to say that most of the bigger garden centres are the size and shape they are today not just because of the factors I have mentioned above but because of the wants and needs the customer. After all if they were not satisfying 95% of your needs they would not be in business.
However, one of the most important ingredients in any successful garden centre is a passionate, focused and driven group of people all working towards a common goal. The staff.
So next time you’re in your local garden centre, give one of the staff a squeeze.
Go on, feel the passion!

More History

It is also worth remembering that the late eighties was probably the best time for the availability of some of the more unusual garden plants. I guess for the garden centres the issue with these plants was that they sat in the garden centre for up to, and beyond, a year and required constant care and attention so that eventually they were not making you much, or any, money. Compare that with a quick selling line like Leylandii and you can see from a business point of view which item made the more sense to stock. The arrival and preaching of retail consultants in the nineties would hammer that home much to the disappointment of plants people, both in the garden centre and their customers
The nineties also brought about a great change in garden centres and the industry as a whole. From the very early nineties onward, the DIY stores and independent hardware stores could see the potential of gardening and started to include a garden section in some shape or form in their stores. When these businesses started selling plants as well as garden accessories it meant that garden centres were no longer competing with each other but also with a new breed of retailer. The key to their success was not necessarily price but another big factor. Convenience.