Is Your Plant Manager Holding Your Business Back?

By John Stanley

Have I got your attention?

It was Tom Peters who last year said “If you’re doing what you’re doing now in five years, your business will be dead”.  It has been said that “80% of what you will purchase in ten years will be from businesses that have yet to be invented”.

These are exciting and challenging times for retailing in the gardening industry.  In the last few months I have had the opportunity to work with independent garden centres on all the continents and there is a global trend and concern.

Independent garden centres are generally now becoming better retailers inside the store than they are outside the store.  The core outdoor department should be outdoor plants. However this department, in my opinion, is not moving forward fast enough and this should be a concern for many garden centres.

Many outdoor plant areas still look like its 1980.  Before you start challenging me, there are obvious exceptions. In Ireland, Gardenworks and the Arboretum are the exceptions.  In the UK, Ferndale Garden Centre and Mid Ulster Garden Centre would be looked on as entrepreneurs. In South Africa Sunkist Garden Pavilion are forward looking and in Australia Banyula and Zanthorrea are also up with the changing trends. But the majority are not changing quickly enough.  The challenge is: why are the majority not keeping up with the consumer’s wants and the marketplace trends?

Why the Time Warp?
It would be easy to lump all the blame in the Plant Managers lap, but I don’t believe that would be a fair way of tackling the problem.  I believe the challenges are deeper.

• Is the horticultural retail education system providing the right retail skills to develop Plant Managers?  Many people I talk to are critical of the educational system when it comes to plant retailing.
• Are owners empowering their plant managers to allow them to make retail decisions or are they keeping them in the dark and therefore employing plant carers rather than plant managers?
• Are we recruiting the right people to manage the plant area?  This critical department needs a person who has retail, managerial and horticultural skills.
• Are the plant managers keeping in tune with consumer trends outside of the core product of plants or have they become engrossed in the product at the expense of the other skills required?

The Future is Plants 

Over the last few months, I have seen a number of leading edge world leading departments in garden centres promoting Christmas, gifts and indoor living.  It is critical that as an industry we also develop the outdoor living department. If we do this, the opportunities for independent garden centres are enormous.  But, we do have some challenges to face and develop.

The Challenges and Opportunities

1. Stockturn

I recently worked in a location where one independent retailer was obtaining 12 stockturns a year in the plant area, whilst another retailer in the same town was not even achieving four.  The first retailer was achieving a high gross profit from the category at years end.  The difference was the first business had a manager who understood stockturn and managed the business with a target stockturn in mind whilst the second business had a manager who had no idea what stockturns were being achieved.

2. A to Z

You would think by now that the nursery “A to Z” system would be defunct, but I still come across it.  It is a great system to fill shelves, but a bad retail system.  Customers are looking for solutions and ideas.  The A to Z system assumes customers have a working knowledge of Latin and can work out ideal plant associations.  There is a role for a plant library in connoisseur nurseries, but it should only be allocated a limited amount of space.

3. No Straight Lines

Independent garden centres have to differentiate themselves from the chain retailers.  The chains find it more efficient to place plants in straight lines at 90° to the edge of the bench.  Therefore it is the one thing you should not do as an independent garden retailer.  You need to take the same product and offer the customer a different experience.

4. Sell Stories

Nigella Lawson and Jonathan Ross on a UK Television chat show, share stories on goose fat and sales of goose fat doubled in a week.  Why?  Because people enjoy stories and if they can relate to them, they are more likely to buy the product.

The success of Wollemi Pine sales around the world have also highlighted that if the team know the stories that relate to plants then they can increase sales  dramatically.

5. Integrate the Products

The consumer is rarely looking for a specific plant.  The majority of consumers are looking for ideas and solutions.  In the indoor living room industry they are provided with ideas where products are integrated together to provide a complete picture.  The same is true outdoors, the successful plant area manager is integrating products and providing the consumer with ideas.  The balance between “ideas” for room settings and product selling is a fine one.  Provide too many solutions settings and sales can drop off, provide none and the consumer gets bored.

6. Know the price points

Know the price points and place products accordingly.  The aim is to maximise sales per square metre.  Therefore you need to position products to maximise the ‘trolley spend’.  This means that sale products with low gross profits should be positioned at the end of the customer’s journey, not at the start.  Encourage the spend on high gross profit items before they see the low gross profit lines.

7. The Container buyer should also be the plant buyer

With fewer gardeners and more decorators in the marketplace, the outdoor retail manager today not only needs to know the product, but also the latest colour fashion trends to enable them to build on these trends.  The “room outside” or patio is now an integral part of the living area and customers want to be seen as up “with the Jones’s”.  The majority of plants displayed in this area will be in containers and the consumer expects the retailer to provide the right package for this fashion room.  To get the product right, which is a container and a plant, I believe you need one product buyer, for both containers and plants; otherwise you may end up with a “mish mash” of products.

The opportunities for independent retailers are enormous, but the outdoor retail area should be a vibrant sales area.  Well managed, highly profitable and providing an experience for the consumer.