Re: price and quality/Best deal??/ now nurseries

In a message dated 1/21/99 10:00:05 AM Central Standard Time,
genebush@otherside.com writes:

<< My nursery grew out of my garden, thus came first. Many of the nurseries I
 am familiar with grew out of their love of gardening. Quite a few of us are
 collectors that could not quit and have specialty nurseries to share that
 addiction. If I could at this point I would end mail order section of the
 operation. Time consuming, labor intensive and expensive for both you and
 me. I carry this more as a courtesy than anything else >>

I would agree, I sell mail order, on sight and at our local farmers markets.
the amount of work to take the order, pull and box and ship a plant out ways
any return involved. It is more work and costs more to do mail order. then you
throw in those that want catalogs but do not want to order but just like to
collect information. 
We have been selling plants for ten years, only in the last two years have we
tested the waters of mail-order. So far the we have learned that shipping
costs are the biggest head ache, last year I would say that on 1/3 rd of the
orders we had to eat a loss on shipping. We have a small area to work with so
mail order accounts help to thin things down in the spring, that is a big
help.

On doing business on the web-that is not cheep ether. The web page costs
$275.00 a year, to take credit cards costs another $700.00 plus the labor and
work to make the site-well time is free, right.

I know that many people think that it would be great to start a business and
use the net, but my advice is first have a costumer base locally and learn how
to market your products before you try the mail order rout.

The farmers markets for us is were 80% of our business is done. Plants are
loaded up on the trailer the day before. I do not have to worry about what I
bring to often, just grab what looks good. takes about three hours to load.
Average sale is $30.00 But most customers buy something every other week
during the year. It's fun to see people buy and buy one year then they do not
buy for a few years then come back and start over again. Every year we meet
new people that are bitten by the plant bug and are looking for something
different that they cannot get at target or malmart.

Selling on sight is easy- people just make an appointment (most of the time)
they ether know what they want or are happy to just look around- average order
this way is $100.00

Mail order like stated above is more work with all the order taking and
shipping, average order $40.00 with a range last year in orders of 565.00
dollars at the top and $5.00 on the low end. 

I started selling plants whole sale-who knows maybe I will head in that
direction again.  I love all kinds of plants, and am happy to see that there
is a growing interest in native plants and more unusual perennials.


Specialty Perennials
http://hardyplants.com

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