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What's Your Focus?

by: Danny Summers
Category: Danny's Blog
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Sep
05

What's Your Focus?

by Danny Summers

Over the past several weeks, I have seen messages from two people I greatly respect as message "gurus." Both seem to be pointing us in a similar direction. I will share portions of each of their messages here, add some perspective that I think can be important for you as a Garden Retailer, and, of course, push you to see their full messages and also connect and follow both of them.

The first is Michael Katz. Michael created Blue Penguin Development some years ago and since then has become one of the nation's best at email marketing. Since launching Blue Penguin in 2000, Michael has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Business Week Online, Bloomberg TV, Forbes.com, Inc.com, USA Today, and other national and local media.

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What If... We Could Seize Every Opportunity?

by: Danny Summers
Category: Danny's Blog
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Apr
25

What If... We Could Seize Every Opportunity?

by Danny Summers

What if... you could seize every opportunity to welcome every person who walked through your gates or through your doors? (I'm not talking about a used-car salesman approach here, but a welcome to our house type greeting.)

What if... we were coming to your home for a special meal or function? The idea of welcoming everyone would certainly be what you would do and what we would expect, right?

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Non-Traditional Revenue Streams

by: Danny Summers
Category: Gail Vanik's Blog
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Mar
18

Non-Traditional Revenue Streams

by Gail Vanik

Taken from Green Profit, August 2024, page 21

Garden center owners looking for ways to increase revenue may find that the avenues available to them aren’t always obvious. However, you can discover several non-traditional revenue streams using creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. [Pictured: Health concerns prompted Vic Vanik to begin growing his own vegetables, but consumer demand made it a revenue stream.]

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What Matters Most...

by: Danny Summers
Category: Danny's Blog
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Oct
14

What Matters Most...

by Danny Summers

What Matters Most... are people. Our families, friends, co-workers, and neighbors. At times like the past two weeks, we quickly realize What Matters Most! Yes, our properties and businesses are important to us all, but most can be replaced. Our people cannot.

I wish to begin this message with a word of thanks and to say we all are extremely grateful to hear from all the Group Centers who have dealt with both Hurricane Helene and Milton over the past 2 weeks. We are grateful to hear their families and staffs were safe and most did not have extensive damage to major structures. While we are hearing them say clean-up and being back to normalcy may take quite some time, all know What Matters Most.

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Search for the Best!

by: Danny Summers
Category: Danny's Blog
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Jul
01

Search for the Best!

by Danny Summers

New Plants and New Products create excitement. The combination of anticipation, expectations, and optimism drives the powerful will to explore. Just ask Indiana Jones – although he wasn't searching for what's new.

The interest in what's new is certainly true in our industry and two weeks from now, many of us will be at Cultivate'22 in Columbus, Ohio. While its roots have been in floriculture production, today Cultivate includes all segments of the industry and covers all five of what I call our standard greengoods categories: Annuals, Herbs/Veggies, Perennials, Shrubs and Trees – and even a few Tropicals.

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Mitigating Buyer’s Remorse

by: Danny Summers
Category: Sid Raisch's Blog
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Apr
13

Mitigating Buyer’s Remorse

by Sid Raisch

(You don’t have time to NOT read this right now because you have customers deciding whether you’re too expensive, or they spent too much in your store and if they’ll never be back.)

What is “buyer’s remorse”? In a word, buyer’s remorse is regret. There are two main sources of buyer’s remorse. One is a cognitive dissonance, where the investment in the purchase consumes the financial resource that could have alternatively been invested in something else of near equal desire. Another is a fear that the purchased item or service isn’t worth the amount it cost. There is some lag time between the customers decision to purchase and the questioning of that decision and in that gap of time is precisely where an appropriate and intelligent effort to counteract the emotion is necessary.

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Mitigating Sticker Shock

by: Danny Summers
Category: Sid Raisch's Blog
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Mar
24

Mitigating Sticker Shock

By Sid Raisch

“Oh, I didn’t think it was going to be THAT much!”

(You don’t have time to NOT read this right now because you have customers thinking, if not saying that very thing in your store.)

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Mitigating Inflation

by: Danny Summers
Category: Sid Raisch's Blog
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Feb
18

Mitigating Inflation

by Sid Raisch

Let’s get right to the point. Inflation is emerging as a crisis just in time for our peak of spring business.

I’m hearing talk of Group clients who are thinking of lowering their margin expectations by passing along only their cost increases in some price increases, especially on higher cost items, but also on lower price high volume items. This notion is primarily in fear that customers will not have as much disposable income to pay so much more.  This thinking is based on what I believe to be incomplete if not faulty logic. Before it goes further it is important to carefully consider all sides of the sentiment.

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