Sharing Spring 2017 Results

Sharing Spring 2017 Results

Danny Summers... with lots of help from my friends!

And It was Halftime! 

On July 17th Steve Bailey released our Mid-Year Weekly Department Review (WDR) to those participating. While not all 102 centers participating in the 2017 program were able to report, it still provides a good view of how Spring from each region. Steve featured some of the graphs on the cover page and there were some real differences (ups and downs).

Overall, The Group is showing a modest increase in sales and average sale year to date with a slight negative on transaction counts. But there are a number of very strong positives. There's lots of great things to share around each center's successes and we hope the comments offered below by these Group members will help to give you ideas. We started this process looking at figures reported in the MidYear WDR, however many centers have continued to add to their positive numbers in July so the following figures shared are from Week 29 of the WDR.

Most regions had mixed results. Currently, we have two regions showing decreases in total sales YTD. The following is by region in more geographical order (clockwise) than anything else. They are certainly among our best for their regions. Moreover, it is important to hear in their own words what they did to have a successful spring.

[Note: this should be great for followup Q&A in direct emails and the GroupEs listserve]


Northeast

Cathy Oulton - [email protected]
Bloom Greenhouse & Garden Center
Hammond Plains, Nova Scotia
Sales +15.2%, Avg Sale -5.5%, Trans Count +21.9%

Quite frankly, Daniel and I worked our butts off. I’m so glad that the numbers have supported the amount of effort put in by my staff and our family. I think the largest impact on our sales was from having to work the retail floor daily myself because we lost our manager just as the season started to get busy. We put a lot of focus on product quality and display above other things and we also raised prices on our hanging baskets. Our crop quality control was really great. All that time tweaking the furnaces, calibrating Dosatrons, checking temps and re-checking made a huge difference.

We focused on the retail greenhouse above all else because there were not enough trained staff to focus in multiple areas. This is our mainstay with the highest margin potential and opportunity. We had to choose what area to keep the tightest control over, ideally all departments would get this level of focus but this year, our main retail house and our production got all of our attention. Many opportunities were missed for marketing and sales in other departments because I was too busy training cashiers and new sales staff to work on the business side. The construction was delayed through no small effort by my husband who has a lawyerly gift for writing letters. You’ll see that it has begun recently in our latest set of WDR numbers! We are so thankful that our city went to bat for us and had the work delayed until mid-July.

Net Income is up 44% to the end of June!
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Rich Clark - [email protected]
Clark Farms (2 locations)
Wakefield and Matunuck, RI
Sales up 5.8% and 12.1%, Avg Sale +.2% and 1.5%, Trans Counts +5.6% and +10.5%

This was the perfect storm in a positive way. Economy, weather, everything. We even had a competitor go out of business in the area which is why we have seen bigger bounces there this spring. Even July has been wonderful with great temps for outdoor activities (more like our September really. One other thing we did this year is we instituted an incentive program where we share the increase in gross margin with the employees. Not sure yet if it helped but something sure did. Looks to be our best year ever!
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Tom Estabrook - [email protected]
Estabrook’s Farm & Greenhouses, Yarmouth, ME
Sales +5.6%, Avg Sale +4%, Trans Count +2.1%

For us, it is a combination of things. First, our commercial landscaper sales is seeing a strong increase with new construction and upgrades. We made the decision to cut production of 6-packs and shift seed material to 3.5" and increased premium vegetative production space. Overall we are growing larger sizes. We also have raised prices. For instance, some were just a dollar increase on smaller sizes but on 4.5 inch premium color (non-seed, vegetative) we went from $3.99 to $5.99 and sold even more. The Maine Association also ran a “Plant Something” ad campaign on TV in April and May and Estabrook’s produced TV spots that tagged onto that timing  (May-June) and I think that found us a number of new customers. Overall a very good spring and it is continuing as July has added onto our increases!


 

MidAtlantic

Heather Klose - [email protected]
Ken Matthews Garden Center
Yorktown, VA
Sales +16.5%, Avg Sale +2.5%, Trans Count +13.6%
Here are the things that we believe have contributed to our increases -

#1 - Rt 17 (front of our store) road construction is finished FINALLY
#2 Terrific weather up to beginning of July
#3 McDonalds pop up location did not open down the road this year
#4 Two other Garden Centers in area closed for good

Hope it continues!!



NC/TN/VA

Jerry Hilton - [email protected]
New Garden
Greensboro, NC
Sales +39.8%, Avg Sale +3.2%, Trans Count +35.5%


Yes we are doing very well and exceeding sales from last year by leaps and bounds. We closed the Village (of 2nd location) in June of last year and we are pleased to see that most of the sales are coming over to the Gazebo. We are also seeing a large number of new customers that have moved to the area. The other thing is that in Counterpoint, if you have not shopped with us in a year your Garden Gold Loyalty program becomes lapsed and on a daily bases we are un-lapsing them so that tells me that our customers are starting to do more gardening and spend more money. We have also created  two new departments, Retail Services and Garden Guide. The Retail Services team does small area plantings, mulching, pruning, container gardening and vacation watering. It alone so far has created to date $45,000 in just labor not to mention the product that goes with it. Garden guide is a service we offer our customers for $85.00 an hour, we will go out and meet with the customer for anything from how to prune, plant id, plant layout, plant problems or just someone that just doesn’t know what to do. Most all of them have turned into either Retail, Garden Enhancement, Maintenance or Landscape job’s. This has been very successful. Needless to say we are very excited about this year and moving forward.


 

South


JD Boone - [email protected]
Dothan Nurseries
Dothan, AL
Sales +8.0%, Avg Sale -4.6%, Trans Counts +13.2%


We saw a very good increase in transactions and revenue this Spring.  Best Spring ever.  You know, in the end it was the weather.  We basically had a 2-3 extra weeks of Spring.  We were selling Azaleas in late February, which has never happened in the past.  We had good rain, but no days got rained out.  Weather was really our friend.

But we also were ready for the rush. In the past year we had increased parking, added a 3rd register, invested in 10 more shopping carts, had two cashiers instead of 1 most days, 3 on Saturdays.  We used our POS to have a better idea of exactly what we needed and when we needed it.  We invested in more large department signage.  We had better informational signs at each individual group of plants. The signage really helped with the whole "silent salesman" side of the garden center.   Employees were better trained on up-selling fertilizers and compost with each sale.  We added a butterfly house which just drew more traffic in general.  Parents and kids were coming out who had never been to the nursery and were pleased with the whole nursery in general and continued to come back.

So bottom line, weather was the major factor.  But I think we did a good job of being ready for the opportunity the good weather presented us.

Also about 1.5 years ago we became extremely aggressive with raising our prices, especially on shrubs, annuals, tropicals, perennials, actually nearly every department.  It has enabled us to keep our quality higher and obviously higher margins.  We saw no push back at all, or none that was noticeable.  Sales only increased.

————


Tim Quebedeaux - [email protected]
Louisiana Nursery (3 locations)
Baton Rouge (Perkins/Prairieville/Coursey)
Sales +11.1%/+13.1%/+9.3%, Avg Sale +6.4%/+11.9%/+3.5%, Trans Counts +4.4%/+1.1%/+5.6%


Several things happened to give us a great start to the year.  Like was mentioned for the Houston area, a good freeze in January killed a good bit of annuals and tropicals.  This combined with an early start (warm weather with no late freezes) to the season gave us a base increase in demand.  Our spring went from Mid February (usually last part of) to Mid May.  Adding to that demand were two other things.  One was the epic flooding in the Baton Rouge and surrounding areas last August.  With over 190,000 plus homes in the area flooded, we believe we saw increased sales this spring with people fixing their landscape.  The other thing I would contribute to the stores themselves.  A continued focus on customer service and our new merchandising style of opening up the store with wider aisles and lower profile displays has given the stores a newer look.  We were more inviting to our customers, increasing their shopping experience through one on one contact and through merchandising.

That combination of things hit just right and we were ready to take advantage of it, with enough product and personnel to handle it...  Watching trends and knowing what causes us to have blips of sales up and down have helped us stay prepared and going in the right direction.  Mitch is always on top of this by always analyzing the numbers to monitor and steer us in the right direction.
________

Victor Flaherty - [email protected]
Plants for All Seasons
Houston, TX
Sales +28.7%, Avg Sale +9.3%, Trans Count +17.8%


 '15 and '16 were years with NO winter. Sales of plants suffered all year. Then last Fall sod webworms hit and with our live FB video that went viral all over Houston we got a lot of recognition. Brought new faces in. That has rolled over to this year. We had 2 days of 20 degree weather in Jan. All annuals died (finally!). Then we had very little Spring rainfall on weekends. Altogether this is the best weather I've seen for garden centers in my 44 years in biz.
     
We do have more marketing activity with a new employee Mindy. That always helps. Sod webworms are hitting again so our sales this year could be up a full 20% over last year. We are already up $600k.

Sherri Harrah (Victor’s daughter) - [email protected]
Plants for All Seasons
I think it's a combination of circumstances.  

1.  Our weather has been the perfect storm.  LoL, no pun intended!!!  We had almost no winter, just 2 days in the 20's that killed everything, then back to warm temps which led to an early Spring then a super mild Summer.
2.  We are seeing a ton of new faces!!!  Not exactly why this is, but I think it's because of all the news media we received last year with the Sod Web Worm explosion.  People were turned on to us last year, then came back this year because they were pleased with what they saw.
3. Our area is still growing to the north and west, and to be honest, there are no other great garden centers around. People are driving a good distance to us because all that is close to them are box stores with no service.
4. I think the fact that we carry high end products that can't be purchased at box stores sets us apart. 
5. Kelly and I do a lot of text consultation and diagnosis.  Customers love this!!!  
______

Joey Bokar - [email protected]
Kerby’s Nursery
Seffner, FL
Sales +17.9%, Avg Sale +5.2%, Trans Count +12.0%


I think there have been both internal and external factors. Internally, we implemented a 'Kerby's Culture Shock' training program to make sure all staff are on the same page when it comes to the Kerby's Culture. We followed that up with some Magical Training (Inspired by the Wizard of Ads): 'Becoming a Conjurer of the Cash Register' for cashiers and 'Becoming a Horticultural Soothsayer' for sales staff. I think that has improved the customers experience in-store and helped the average sale. Our marketing has been consistent as well. Weekly, personal e-mail newsletters, daily (almost) facebook posts and monthly direct mail (in spring) have kept our message in front of people consistently. Externally, customers seem to have more confidence. Gas is down, stocks are up and building is going crazy in our area, so it seems like external factors are helping to put more people in the marketplace. 

Now here's hoping the momentum continues!



Ohio

Evan Webeler - [email protected]
White Oak Gardens
Cincinnati, OH
Sales +8.5%, Avg Sale +4.2%, Trans Count +4.2%


I think that this has been a interesting year for us to say the least.  With the new remodel, I think that has been the biggest factor in our sales increase.  We made a very sizable site improvement where we tore down our old greenhouses and more than tripled the size of our paved covered shopping (took out about 100 truckloads of dirt to make the place more on the same level).  Overall the categories that are featured in our new space is what has really pushed the sales increase.  Annuals are up over 13% resulting in 45% of our increase.  This was followed by a 42% increase in tropicals/succulents.  The succulent category we decided to "blow up" this year and dedicated more featured space to it and it has paid off.  Another reason our numbers look good is we hosted our own peach truck on two Saturdays in June.  On these two days we sold $18,000 in peaches (albeit only a 12.5% margin) (80% of this was pre-sold).  We worked with a local rewholesaler who had grower contacts.  We also distributed a coupon to our peach customers which helped drive garden center purchases.  Lastly I would say for our grand opening weekend we had perfect weather in early April and we had giveaways, and had our greenhouses fully stocked.  I would say that was our most people through the door weekend at least very similar to mothers day weekend although the sales were not near mothers day weekend, but it was the best sales weekend we had in April ever.  Other areas that were not as much impacted by the site improvements have been flat compared to last year (trees, shrubs, hardgoods, and bagged products).  Moving forward this year we expect to be up every week through the end of the year, due to last year our place was under construction from July 4th through the end of the year.
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Upper Midwest

Katey Romence - [email protected]
Romence Gardens & Greenhouse
Grand Rapids, MI
Sales +5.9%, Avg Sale +1.5%, Trans Count +4.4%


1) Great staff:  This year I had a large number of return employees.  We have raised our pay for most employees and have been lucky enough to retain more than normal.  This is always a bonus.  Customers build relationships with our employees and this has shown to help in return customers, new younger customers, (younger hipsters especially) and just keeping a repor with everyone.  With this return staff due to the good pay they are taking on more responsibility and making our jobs and owners much easier.
 
2) Direct mail / Our customer list: Since fall of 2014 we have been building our customer base.  Everyone is entered if possible into our database.  They receive reward points (250 points = $15 reward on future purchase :  $.75 per point so about $333 gets them $15)   People are really responding to this.  We dropped alot of our other advertising and mixed it up this year.  In the past we sent 3-4 mailers to our customers along with fishing for new customers.  This year I only sent to my customer list which grew from 3000’ish in 2014 to almost 9000 now.  We sent 6 cards spaced with coupons that started and ended together so that people always had specials and coupons to use.  Our coupons can be used together if they are from one flyer but they can't mix multiple flyers...we just really focused on having start and end dates that would make this easier.  The coupons on the flyer (3-6 on each) had returns from 3% - 9%!
 
3) Email blasts: Emails come along with the customer sign ups.  Not everyone will give you one but customers are starting to realize getting one or two a week with a special just for them is fun and cool!  So the VIP specials are things they can show on their phone or print off the email....they are not in store specials!  We make them things that will go nicely with the coupons that are running.  For instance when we have a shrub coupon.. .we would have a VIP email for soils and mulches they would need to plant those.  When we had a HB coupon we would send something about herbs and veggies ----get them in another department.  We did alot of buy X get 1 free.  We started with higher of Buy 4 get 5th free and this slowly got better over the season...buy 3 get 4th and right now our perennials are buy 2 get the 3rd free.  We try to make it open so people can pick out anything (shrub, tree, rose, hosta etc)  This helps us because sometimes their free item is way less than the shrub or tree etc.  We also started our semi annual clearance sale a little earlier this year.  We ran it the last week of June and then closed for the very first time for the 4th of July to give everyone 3 days off...we did lose money on this decision but it helped morale so 50/50 on that.   Next year we will run the sale early again but most likely stay open and just close on the 4th.
 
4) WDR reports:   This has helped me get a handle on where we want to be and where we are. We set goals each month and with Bill pushing me we reached them almost every time.  Our internet is not in our WDR numbers that is also up almost 4% so far and we had some staffing difficulties in this department but my brother (the rockstar) made it happen.  
 
Over all I am proud of what we have done and also am thankful the economy seems to be in a good place.   We have some over all improvement goals for next year and I know this is all basic but it seems to be really working.  
 



Northwest/BC

Miles Hunter, General Manager - [email protected]
Hunters Garden Centre & Flower Shop (2 locations)
Vancouver and Surrey, British Columbia


Sales +9.2%/-7.9%, Avg Sale +6.4%/+3.4%, Trans Count +2.7%/-10.9%
Our Vancouver store has been doing very well and it is great to see the sales increase. I have been trying to focus our Surrey store on increasing its Gross Margin as Sales seems to have stagnated over the past 5 years. We have only made minimal gains in some areas.
 
The biggest difference between our stores is… Location, Location, Location. There is a significant difference in the competition, demographics, and shopping convenience.
 
There is little to no competition near our Vancouver store and what there is offers a limited selection. We have also had 3 garden centres near our Vancouver store close over the past 3 years so our sales continue to increase as a result. Our Surrey store has a plethora of competition including many seasonal stores that are open for a short time so they sell everything cheap and clear it out early.
 
The demographics are quite different as well. Vancouver has a younger clientele that are significantly into the foodscape revolution, growing their own everything. Vancouver also has allot of older people (55-65) with larger homes and they enjoy their gardens very much. Our Surrey store has a very cheap clientele that only tend to want the meat and potato type plants and they want a discount on everything “because I buy so much”, (but they don’t).
 
In Surrey they can also drive for 15 minutes and visit 10-15 other garden stores or buy direct from the wholesale growers that sell to anyone that is a “contractor” (ie. Has a business license) which seems to be everyone in Surrey. At our Vancouver store a customer would have to drive 15-20 minutes just to get to the next closest store and Vancouver customers are less likely to want to drive anywhere. They believe that they should be able to buy everything that they need in their community and not have to leave.
 
In summary I would say:

“Our stores continue to be successful because we offer a high level of service, with a broad selection of gardening products, at the best quality we can afford to buy, and offer it all at a fair price.”
 
I had a local radio station that we advertise with do a survey of their listeners and ask them some questions about gardening. I am attaching the results for you to see. Basically when a consumer is considering going to a garden store price is the least important factor of the four we listed. Quality was most important with Selection finishing a close second and Service third.


THANK YOU!

A special THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to this sharing article. Please continue this process and send an email to the individual member (emails are shown) or to GroupES a group conversation!

Sharing is at the heart of The Garden Center Group!

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