Who Is the Real Customer of Your Garden Center’s Online Store?
Who Is the Real Customer of Your Garden Center’s Online Store?
by Souny Kennedy
A recent order inside the E-Commerce Connect network made us stop and think. The order totaled $1,900—all placed in a single transaction with larger quantities of plants. When we first saw it, our initial thought was simple: maybe it’s a homeowner tackling a major landscape project. That certainly happens. Many passionate gardeners will invest heavily when redesigning a yard or installing new beds.
But it also raised a bigger question - Who is the real customer of your garden center’s online store?
When we first imagined e-commerce for garden centers, the typical buyer looked like the everyday plant lover—someone browsing online and ordering a few plants for their porch, patio, or garden. Maybe one to five plants per order.
But what if something else is emerging? What if the customer isn’t always the end homeowner?
What if the customer is a local landscaper, interior designer, boutique owner, coffee shop, or small business using the garden center’s website to source plants for their own customers?
With dropshipping, a smaller landscaper could order plants directly from a garden center’s online store and have them delivered straight to the client’s home. No pickup. No inventory to manage. No extra logistics. Suddenly, the garden center isn’t just selling plants online.
It becomes the plant fulfillment partner for the entire local business community.
Think about the relationships garden centers already have in their towns. They know the landscapers. They know the coffee shops, boutiques, restaurants, and interior designers. These businesses all use plants to enhance their spaces, their brand, and their customer experience.
E-commerce drop-shipping opens the door for a new kind of collaboration.
Imagine a local coffee shop promoting plants to its customers. On their website or social media, they could offer a simple “Shop Plants” button. When customers click it, they’re directed to a landing page within the local garden center’s website that features the coffee shop’s logo and branding. To the customer, it still feels like they’re engaging with the business they love. But behind the scenes, the garden center powers the ordering, fulfillment, and delivery through dropshipping.
Everyone wins.
- The customer gets beautiful plants delivered to their door.
- The coffee shop or partner business expands what they can offer their audience.
- And the garden center becomes the trusted plant supplier and fulfillment engine for the community.
Keeping the Business Structure Simple
One important detail in a model like this is who actually processes the sale.
In this scenario, the garden center remains the retailer of record because the purchase is completed on the garden center’s website. The customer’s payment, receipt, and order all run through the garden center’s e-commerce system.
That means the garden center:
- Collects and remits the applicable sales tax
- Owns the customer transaction
- Manages customer service if needed
The supplier or grower simply fulfills the order through dropshipping, while the partner business—such as the coffee shop—acts as a referral or marketing partner that helped introduce the customer to the purchase.
This keeps the structure simple. The coffee shop doesn’t have to become a plant retailer, register for sales tax, or manage product logistics. The garden center continues doing what it already does best—selling plants—while the supplier handles fulfillment.
How the Community Partner Businesses Can Benefit
Naturally, many people might assume the partner business would want a percentage of the sale. In a traditional partnership model, that would make sense. But asking a coffee shop or boutique to become a member of a plant e-commerce program isn’t very realistic. A coffee shop shouldn’t suddenly become a plant retailer. Their expertise is coffee. Their customers come to them for coffee.
The same is true for garden centers. Garden centers shouldn’t suddenly feel like they need to start selling coffee. The strength of this model is that each business stays in its own lane while supporting one another.
If a garden center chooses to reward a local partner business for sending customers their way, that can happen outside of the E-Commerce Connect program, directly between the two local businesses.
Some garden centers may offer a small referral share or commission. Others may prefer simpler arrangements, such as:
- Providing plants at a discount to decorate the partner’s space
- Offering store gift cards or credits
- Creating seasonal plant installations for their business
- Running cross-promotions or events together
In many communities, the value may come less from formal revenue sharing and more from mutual exposure and shared customers. This kind of partnership model creates something powerful: a local plant ecosystem.
Take a moment to watch a short explainer video here to see how the entire drop-shipping ecosystem works for the independent garden center and supplier community.
Instead of relying solely on foot traffic or traditional retail, garden centers can extend their reach through the networks of other small businesses. Each partner becomes a new doorway for customers to discover plants—and the garden center remains at the center of that network.
That $1,900 order may simply have been a homeowner tackling a big project. Or it may be an early signal of something larger. As e-commerce continues to evolve for garden centers, the real opportunity may not just be selling plants online.
It may be empowering an entire community of small businesses to sell plants together—while the local garden center makes it all possible.
Best regards,
Souny Kennedy, Co-Founder & Creator
BoomerWrangle, LLC
E: [email protected]
BoomerWrangle, LLC builds digital infrastructure that helps independent businesses connect their teams, suppliers, and operations through modern workplace platforms.
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