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service in the garden centre

At 09:47 AM 3/18/2003 -0500, you wrote:
This is true. But there's a deeper marketing question when specialty shops have to compete with the big boxes. Ask a local nursery owner what he does for a living. If he answers, "sell plants," then he's in the wrong business. His livelihood should be based on selling service. There is no other way he can compete with the discount chains and garden centers. I can buy a plant at Walmart, sure. But what I can't buy there are answers to my questions about how to care for that plant. After all, the clerk selling it to me was probably selling ladies unmentionables the week before.


Brook
You're right about there being deeper issues. I suspect success will depend on a wide variety of factors.

There are only 3 things you can sell in any business - the best price - the best product - the best service and excel at what you are doing. (note - that "best" does not necessarily mean highest or lowest but it often does) All other variables fall into either price, product or service. To survive in your small garden center or nursery, you have to "own" one of these 3 areas. GC's, or any business, that say they can excel in 2 or 3 of these areas are kidding themselves. It is tough enough to excel in one - never mind more than one.

If you examine the nursery industry, you'll see that garden centers that say they have "service" rarely do. They advertise as such but unless it is a very small operation -mom and pop - where the grower is answering the questions, the small retailer has as much trouble hiring competent help as the big box. This is one of those myths promoted by the small garden centre. :-) Small well-niched grower-retailers who sell and retail can often answer questions on their products in a satisfactory way.

I've done a lot of marketing research into garden centres and their selling - not to mention 25+ years in the nursery industry getting paid to do this kind of thing - ;-) and imho, service is a much over-rated commodity that the vast majority of customers do *not* pay for. They say they pay for it but if you look at the sales - they don't. As the NYT article pointed out, they ask the question at the small guy and then make the majority of purchases at the box store. They've chosen "best price" over "best service" when it comes to laying down their money. Now, I'm sure folks on this list will say that they don't do this and encourage their readers not to but the average consumer votes with the wallet and the numbers quoted by the NYT are an indication of that vote. Every production nursery sees the same kind of thing as I'm sure a few other nursery guys here can attest to. Small gc's will survive if they can find enough of a market that will pay for the product or service they are offering and that - of course - is the marketing challenge they face.

There is a lot of discussion within the trade now about who's going to survive this latest round of competition and identifying those winners is an interesting exercise in marketing. For the independent, it comes down to finding a niche and then becoming the "best" at one of price/product/service. The boxes have the price locked up as we note. This only leaves product and service to the independents. If service doesn't pay, then product is the only category left.

The chains typically will have 300 sku's in the garden center green goods. The independents will have to have many more. The nursery that I work for - Valleybrook - (we own http://www.perennials.com btw) :-) provides somewhere around 1500 varieties to the independents. Having plants the chains do not is only one way to create a difference in product. There are others but they probably belong in marketing articles rather than a gw list. :-)

This is a particularly "interesting" year for the trade. Following the droughts of last year, there are a significant number of garden centers that are facing make or break scenarios.

You do have to have service to survive but imho it will not be the deciding variable in the survivability of the small retail garden center.

And just to offer up one more bit of heresy - if I were to put my money on a garden centre owner that identified himself as a plant retailer or one who identified himself as a grower --- I'd put my money on the retailer every day as the one that will still be around in a few years. Sharp pencils looking at the numbers will survive while sharp dibbles will take a beating. :-)

Just my .02

Doug
Douglas Green,
GWA Award of Excellence winner - "Gardening Wisdom"
Freelance and syndicated garden writer http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com/clips/clipmaster.htm
Perennial Flowers http://www.gardening-tips-perennials.com



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