California Trials 2025

Coverage by Ball Publishing's GrowerTalks

Most Garden Centers do not attend the California Trails in-person, so one of the very best ways to see what's coming in new plants is be connected in the GrowerTalks coverage. Chris Beytes, Jen Zurko, and Bill Calkins provide your best seat to not only read but to see their video coverage.

This is a preview of what we will see at upcoming trade shows and the very best of these new plants maybe selected by you for Retailers' Choice Awards or Cool Product Awards!

Why Great Marketing Can’t Fix Bad Customer Service

by Carl Phillips, The Group Mystery Shopper Guru

It’s been over 24 years since the roll-out of The Garden Center Group Mystery Shopper Program. Over three thousand, nine five hundred (3,950+) shops have been completed that form the basis for great customer service benchmarking.

Carl Phillips has been instrumental in the program development since its inception. He is known as one of the mystery shopper industry founding fathers and The Group is blessed by having his guidance. Carl shares a number of blog articles every year and the following is one he shared a week ago. We think it is timely for your review.

Young Retailer Award 

 Brought to you by:

Why is Robert Hayter So Busy?

by Danny Summers

We know how much Robert Hayter helps our Garden Centers. It seems like every week he is heading to one of The Group's Retail Centers to create renovation or facility development plans. If you hear him speak at The Fall Event, you also know he also touches a number of businesses he co-owns as well as businesses he helps outside of Garden Retail.

Did you know this includes the Golf Industry?

What's Your Blind Spot?
How Cognitive Biases Limit You as a Leader

by Carl Phillips

It’s been over 22 years since the roll-out of The Garden Center Group Mystery Shopper Program. Over three thousand, six hundred (3,600+) shops have been completed that form the basis for great customer service benchmarking.

Why Are Employees Really Quitting?
You Can Boil It Down to 6 Simple Reasons.

By Carl Phillips

It’s been over 22 years since the roll-out of The Garden Center Group Mystery Shopper Program. Over three thousand, 600 hundred (3,600+) shops have been completed that form the basis for great customer service benchmarking. Carl Phillips has been instrumental in the program development since its inception. He is known as one of the mystery shopper industry founding fathers and The Group is blessed by having his guidance. Carl shares a number of blog articles and the following is one he shared last month and we think it is timely for your review.

How to be a Customer– Are there classes for that?

by Carl Phillips

In my first career life I was in some form of department store management.  Everything from managing particular departments, operations manager, store manager and regional manager of stores.  I’ve spent countless hours helping my associates deal with every customer type known to mankind.  At one point in my career journey, as a store manager, I asked my associates to never tell a customer no.  If a customer asked for something the sales associate knew they couldn’t grant, they were to apologize and say “I’m sorry, I can’t authorize that but I’ll call a manager”.

It's amazing how customers change their confrontational tone, most of the time, when a manager is involved.  It’s even more amazing to witness other customers becoming involved, in a non-confrontational way to bring a positive lite to a situation.

The Group eLists - Are You Subscribed?

Your Fastest Way to Share with other Group Centers!

As a Client of The Garden Center Group, you and your staff are encouraged to become active in our eLists (i.e., e-mail listserves). Save time by starting a discussion and quickly receive responses from peer centers. These lists are not moderated to facilitate quick responses. You may subscribe to available eLists through The Group WebSystem. These eLists are exclusive services of The Garden Center Group and use is strictly limited to Garden Center Group Clients and Service Providers. Any replies to a new message are redistributed to the entire list of current eList subscribers. If you would rather send a reply only to the original sender, be sure to redirect (forward) your email reply. Once subscribed you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to participate.

See all the details HERE.

GROUPtalk-Live: GrowIt! 2020 Houseplant Report

The Fall Event 2019 - It's Time for Some TLC

by Tim Miles

Tim Miles is no stranger to The Fall Event. In fact, 2019 was the third time he has been with us as a featured presenter. This year, Tim shared his take on the time in which we live in today and how "Leading with Love" can be the real difference for our business, everyone we work with and for as well as our communities. We are featuring Tim's presentation here as well as making his slides available to you. There's a lot of important messages here. It's something to watch multiple times and even show others.

Attention Group Owners-Managers:
Make sure to send this on to whomever does your email newsletters...

How's your newsletters? No matter the answer, can they be improved?

A few weeks back we had a lengthy GroupEs eList discussion about e-marketing and especially email newsletters. In the middle of the conversation, Robert Hendrickson said this is an indication we need to reach out to Michael Katz at Blue Penguin Development for his coaching skills. Michael is one of the best at creating effective email newsletters. He has been a featured speaker at multiple past Fall Events and some of you no doubt are on his email list today. But we know many of you are not. I spoke to Michael to discuss our needs and he has put together a special offer, just for The Group. Here's details:

The Forecast – Outlook for the Spring Season

featuring Dr. Charlie Hall and Dr. Marco Palma, Texas A&M, College Station, TX

The SNA Conference was held January 7-8, 2019 in Baltimore, in conjunction with MANTS. Dr. Charlie Hall, the nation's foremost green industry economist, teamed up with Dr. Marco Palma to provide insight on the outlook for the spring season.The following is the recorded presentation. Whether you were there for the event or not, this is an important 29 minutes for you and your management team to see again!

Should you hold back, stand status quo, or see this time of uncertainty as a time of opportunity? What impact will housing trends have on the economy? How will Generation X impact the market as the Baby Boomers are retiring? What will the 2019 spring season look like and how will it impact your business? Structural changes in the industry will also be discussed, along with strategic implication for growers, service providers, and retailers.

Van Wilgen's Success of PW Store-in-a-Store

by Jessica DeGraaf and Meghan Owens, Proven Winners^®

Loyalty Programs - Group Sharing Footnotes

The following footnotes have been collected by Danny Summers from The Group during discussions on this subject at the time of developing this story. We plan to add additional ideas from others over time. These notes provide important additional Group guidance in developing or evaluating your program(s).

Loyalty Programs to Drive Sales & Customer Engagement

By Sam Kirkland, National Accounts Manager, Epicor Software
  ...with Group discussion footnotes added

[Footnotes have been collected by Danny Summers from The Group during discussions on this subject at the time of developing this story and are located at the end of this article. These notes provide important additional Group guidance in developing or evaluating your program(s).]

The Fall Event 2018 TableTalks

You've told us that some of the most meaningful and productive experiences at The Fall Event are a result of the time you spend getting to know and learning from your peers. So at The Fall Event 2018 we introduced a new format with each session beginning with a speaker presentation, followed by peer-to-peer (P2P) TableTalks and concluding with discussion and Q&A with the speaker. We also had a bulletin board to post Topics of Interest to determine topics for TableTalks during lunch on Tuesday. This resulted in some very interesting topics and dialog. Below you will find a list of the topics and a summary of the discussions.

Selling to Different "Tribes"

by Bill Calkins, Ball Seed

[Danny] During The Fall Event 2018, Bill Calkins of Ball Seed shared a link to a podcast/blog he is producing. He said, "I have a new podcast called STEM: Insider Tips for Greenhouse Pros that covers greenhouse Production but it also has plenty of RETAIL TOPICS." He has produced a number of STEM podcasts this year and this one is an excellent message to our Group Centers! Here's a text from this edition of STEM podcast:

#TheFallEvent2018 - Garden Answer's Laura and Aaron present...

"YES YOU CAN Reach Your Customers through Social Media!"

Laura and her husband, Aaron, started Garden Answer, a YouTube how-to gardening channel filled with style, expertise and helpful gardening knowledge, in 2014. Today, they attract over 300,000 YouTube channel subscribers and have generated over 25 million views of their YouTube gardening videos. Garden Answer has 2.2 million followers and over 450 million video views. Garden Answer has become quite a sensation in just a short  time, and the numbers are continually growing!

Their tremendous popularity has prompted industry brands like Proven Winners, Espoma, Gardener's Supply, and others, to partner with Garden Answer to reach consumers.

The Secret To Living A Happy Retirement

by Wes Moss (a preview to The Fall Event 2018)

We all want to be happy. Why wouldn’t we? Happiness is a wonderful feeling of well-being and contentment. Over the courses of our lives, we set our sights on happiness. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

As a Certified Financial Planner, I help people recognize and work towards achieving their financial goals. I help them with allocating their investments, charting their retirement income streams, and I teach them about the various ins-and-outs of financial planning. I love it. This is the nuts-and-bolts stuff we should all think about when trying to accomplish our financial goals.

HRI's New Wertheim, van der Ploeg & Klemeyer Fund

by Danny Summers


There will be a new named fund announced on Saturday, July 14th, during the Annual HRI Reception, held in conjunction with Cultivate'18. This one will honor someone who has been very close to many of you and very supportive of The Garden Center Group - Ernest Wertheim. Several of our Group have served on the HRI boards and committees. Currently, Steve Mostardi is on the HRI Executive Committee. The fund will honor both Ernest and his long-time partner Jack Klemeyer. HRI has received initial seed monies, reportedly close to $20,000 currently, in order to establish the fund and make the official announcement. The fund will be called the Wertheim, van der Ploeg & Klemeyer Fund and will support general HRI Research efforts. HRI's Administrator, Jennifer Gray, shared the following with us:

"We are excited about the establishment of this fund to honor both Ernest and Jack. We have several ways to give: