Knowledge, Perspectives and Ideas!

by Danny Summers

The search for knowledge is as old as time itself. Mankind's earliest wonder was on things like how fire worked and how they could use it for their advantage. It is beyond comprehension how the quest for knowledge and level of learning over centuries has brought us to where we are today.

Just considering our industry and the study of Horticulture is a small example. And really, all the knowledge gained about the Plant Kingdom is no minor matter. And the search continues.

ReThink Marketing - Degradation

by Sid Raisch

Marketing Degradation - Marketing has become degraded to an undisciplined practice of rapid-fire social media posts with messages covering dozens if not hundreds of topics to the point that - there is no real net message, or benefit of creating them.

Let’s begin with the end in mind. The end in marketing is a purchase. I will come back to that notion.

Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience - Part 2

by John Kennedy

Attitude Defines Altitude

In this video, your team will understand how important it is to arrive at work ready to deliver an exceptional retail experience…every single day.  And in order to do that, it has to be from within…an inside job.

The Power of Attitude (good or bad) can dictate the entire day for the team and the entire experience for the customer. Is your attitude contagious or a contagion?  Because when the customer arrives at your garden center, they don’t really care about what happened prior to work, or that it’s hot, or that you are two folks down, or the POS is off-line, or a truck just arrived, or a storm just blew over your entire tree selection, or, or, or…

Studying Your Audience

by Danny Summers

As we have wrapped up spring in most regions the last few weeks, you now have the majority of your Spring 2024 Customer Data available to study. We can see in Week 22 of the WDR, year-to-date Average Sale remains virtually flat with this same week last year. But Transaction Counts year-to-date are down about -5%.

These compare to Average Sale being flat and Transaction Counts being +2.6% as of this week last year. And then end-of-year for 2023 being virtually even with Average Sale & Transaction Counts resulting in near-even sales against 2022.

Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience - Part 1

by John Kennedy

Part 1 - Introduction: Setting the Table for Success

As Danny mentioned a few weeks back, the Starbucks story was built upon a hyper-focus on the customer experience. The idea of dusting off this video series from Member Clicks and reintroducing it (or introducing it to new folks) would be a great chance to “sharpen the saw” for your training and development goals during the summer.

Crafting Opportunities

by Danny Summers

One of the earliest forms of what we might call a craft today is Paper Mache. The image of the bee above is an example. A quick search reveals Paper Mache's beginning can be traced back to the 1300's. Today, we could quickly envision a piñata to represent Paper Mache, or an elementary school project. I can remember our girls using Paper Mache to building a volcano for one of their projects (and no kitchen or dining room tables were damaged by eruptions).

I am thinking for Garden Retailing, the idea for Crafting Opportunities could be focused toward both plants and product categories as well as activities outside of the typical spring season.

Incredible Shrinking Transactions, and What to Do - Part 4

by Sid Raisch

Part 4 - Sell What THEY Want to Buy - The CHEESE
[Continued from Part 3 - Click HERE to read from Group Blog]

We’ve covered a lot of ground so far in Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this article series. Be sure to click on the link above to review Part 3 or to catch up if you haven’t been following along with each part.

Creative Juices

by Danny Summers

Real creativity, what we may call Creative Juices, must take a special kind of focus and attention. It may require quiet space to really unplug and block out all the typical hustle and bustle you normally experience in the work setting. I decided to ask Tom Kegley what he does to be in the best position for his most creative work. Here's what Tom said:

"In my work, CREATIVITY is equal parts INSPIRATION (concept) and PERSPIRATION (execution). Given this notion of Applied Creativity, I’ll focus on the front end. How does something intangible as INSPIRATION happen?

2023 P&L Study Review - Part B

by Tim Quebedeaux

Part B – “Best Practices Standards” – Physical Facility, Revenues, Payment Types, and Labor Hours

Last week we saw how the Bubble Chart shows us how important the bottom line (Profit) is, over the top line (Revenues).  It states, “It is not how much you SELL, it is how much you KEEP."

Focus on the Customer!

by Danny Summers

This story begins as a little coffee shop opened in 1971 in Seattle's Pike Place Market. The story actually began when three students met a few years earlier at the University of San Francisco. The three classmates were Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker. They were all interested in the coffee business. Maybe it had something to do with long hours studying and coffee helping to keep their eyes open. Following their common interest, they visited a little coffee shop across the bay in Berkley which had opened a few years before.

The Berkley shop the three students visited was owned by Alfred Peet, born in the Netherlands, who "cut his teeth" in the coffee industry in his homeland, caring for the roasting and grinding machinery at the small coffee company his father owned, the B. Koorn & Company, located in Alkmaar, Holland.

2023 P&L Study Review - Part A

by Tim Quebedeaux

Congrats to all the Garden Group Centers that reported in the 2023 Profit & Loss Study, a record 86 Garden Centers with 66 of those reporting to at least Part 4 (Inventory Turns & Gross Margin Return on Inventory Investment - GRMOII). This is an EBIDTA (Earnings before Interest, Depreciation, Taxes and Amortization) P&L Study otherwise known as an Operating P&L Study. We use this type of Profit & Loss so that we can compare apples to apples, how your Garden Center operates compared to other centers. The Study compares your center to The Total Group, Centers in your Region, Centers that are either Retail or Retail-Grower, Similar Sales Level to you, and ultimately to the Best of the Best Group.

To be able to even think about comparing your business to others, you need to be able to measure what you are going to compare. Reporting to the Garden Center Group Annual P&L Study is a great start! Once you have that accountability in the numbers, the all-important Key Performant Indicators (KPI’s), you can begin to compare your profitability to other centers and begin to ask the questions – how and why did they do it?

Observations

by Danny Summers

During your busiest times, I understand how difficult it is to step back to make observations to develop important perspectives. But for Owners and Managers, stepping back during these fast-paced days can be critical and provide the best insights for making important changes.

This is like a major league baseball manager viewing from the dugout, he is reading every move the opposing pitcher is making and directing adjustments for his team.

Incredible Shrinking Transactions, and What to Do - Part 3

by Sid Raisch

Part 3 - Meet Them - Where THEY Are (Not Where We Are)

READ THIS FIRST - This week as we head towards Mothers Day, be thinking about the customers who haven’t been in your store and you won’t be seeing this week, next week, next month, or ever, if we don’t figure out how to REACH them.

Being Creative - Organically!

by Danny Summers

Sometimes, great ideas begin... Organically.

And by "organically" I don't mean our first reaction of thinking about your favorite compost or plant nutrient. Instead, I am thinking about an idea that arrives "naturally" or without great effort to create a wonderful new idea.

Tricking Broca

by Gail Vanik

Even though garden centers are primarily a visual industry with bright colors and interesting textures, another sense should be considered when planning your marketing mix: auditory.

I’m a huge fan of radio advertising because it’s one medium where you can cast a net broader than anywhere else to catch new customers. The airwaves reach far and wide, and radio worked especially well for me in Colorado when I would have gone broke advertising in every small-town newspaper within our 200-mile marketing area.

Going BIG in Big D!

by Danny Summers

Do you know The Fall Event 2024 is heading to Dallas, Texas this September? If you don't know, either I have not been doing my job, or maybe you have not been reading GROUPtalk, or seeing any of my mountain of emails with my signature line to shout the event dates, or perhaps you have been distracted by other things. In any case, you know now!

I will begin by revealing the initial details below and will be sharing more of the entire program in the coming weeks. There are a few important things you should know now before you start considering your travel plans.

The Garden Retailing Train

by Danny Summers

If you have been receiving GROUPtalk for some time now, the image above and the title of this message may seem vaguely familiar, and you are correct. I first used this in August of 2021 with a slightly different title, "The Train of Garden Retailing." At the time, we had already been through the spring seasons of 2020 and 2021. I know you remember what that was like. It was a time of great change for all Garden Centers, adapting to new ways to do many things, in order to serve your growing customer audience.

In the August 2021 message, I began by saying, "At first glance this might appear as a strange combination...Train verses Garden Retailing? But bear with me as I share some thoughts I have had in recent months. This idea came to me as I was talking with prospective Centers who asked about what we do in The Group and why they should consider joining. Basically, "Why The Group?"

Incredible Shrinking Transactions... and What to Do – Part 2

by Sid Raisch

Incredible Shrinking Transactions, and What to Do - Part 2

by Sid Raisch

[Continued from Part 1 - Click to review from Group Blog]

The Garden Center Group’s 2023 P&L Study shows a continued trend of flatness of the three top KPI’s with nearly flat revenue, transaction counts, and average dollars per transaction (barely keeping with inflation). Of course there are the above average performing companies who lift this average, along with the corresponding below average performers. No matter which side of average a garden center is, this is an alarming trend. The most alarming thing is the slide, which began in 2008 at the start of the Great Recession and continued to 2019 (after a brief COVID relief in 2020 and 2021), has returned and it is sticking. The reason - Baby Boomers are aging out. The real reason? We as an industry are failing at replacing revenue from Baby Boomers.

Founded with a Purpose

by Danny Summers

If you have been in the BWI (Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport) and in the A/B Terminal Food Court area, most likely you have seen the round coffee stand in the center of the area. It is Mayorga Coffee, a local coffee roaster in Rockville, MD (about 6 miles northwest of the Washington, DC beltway).

Having enjoyed my first cup of what I call Mayorga's flagship dark-roast, Cafe Cubano, I was determined to find where we could get more for our everyday java-fix.

Invasive Plants?

by Danny Summers

Being "in the industry" we know what this title refers to... In our world, a plant being termed an "Invasive Plant" says it is aggressive, multiplies at will and overtakes space from other plants, and disrupts the careful balance of the native landscape.

But the idea of this message is a positive one and an observation of seeing numerous images of plants making big impressions for products and people outside our industry.