Ian's Bits & Bobs: The Blog

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Reading the Mid-Spring Tea Leaves

For garden retailers in the warmer climate zones, the week after Mother’s Day is slowing down, over the peak, saying “now we have to work harder for it.” In most colder climates, Mother’s Day sales were down (this year at least), in some places seriously so, as May swapped weather with March. But in both climates it’s no time to relax (May everywhere pays wages for weeks ahead). It IS time though to read some mid-spring tea leaves in case you are staring at that still-massive inventory number….

What’s selling?

Succulents, succulents, and oh did I mention succulents? Any shape, color, size and style are flying off the shelf this year, and if you were smart enough to invest in added-value versions in planters and arrangements – even better. Aligned with that, I see all things naturelle with wood, stone and moss in those added-value lines. Small, simple and intense – which may reflect the influence of TV and other media on the under 35’s, with their minimalist homes and no-clutter styles. Surprisingly then is the strong demand for garden art and deco, maybe that’s the Boomers getting their own back. Another significant tea-leaf, off-the-charts demand for “Do It For Me” tree and shrub planting suggests that despite TV news and politicians, a lot of Americans feel good about spending the money on things they no longer want to do.

What’s not?

The DIFM surge might also be causing the fall in tree and shrub sales after a great year last year, but poor weather is also a factor. The earthy stone/wood trend above might also be the cause of reports that finally, after 20 years, sales of high color, high gloss, large ceramic pottery, is flattening out. Garden décor is hot but in a matte-finished, earthy or rusty way it seems.

Unsurprisingly, independents are reporting a drop in “hard goods” or garden supplies especially in controls or “chemicals” (as us old lags still call them). I think householders are using less in total anyway and most independents have lost the battle with the home centers for various reasons, the biggest of which is the (incorrect) perception that every single product on every single shelf must have a 50%+ gross margin. In fact, the home centers have used that victory to now present themselves as the one-stop shop for hard goods AND green goods, but that’s another blog for another day.

Serious tea-leaf analysis needed!

I talked to an owner who was questioning the strategy of his “chemical” category after he pulled a POS report (yes in mid-May!) showing that the 202 items sold in the “Insecticide” sub-class took 68 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs). Think about that: after the busiest weekend of the year, each SKU had only averaged 2.9 sold (out of, presumably, a case of 12). As he said, he was amazed at the sheer volume of SKUs to generate moderate sales. Food for thought and a validation for a comment from Jim Sullivan on my last post.

So, sharing is caring … leave a comment letting us know:  what are your mid-May surprises?

Photo Credit: Upscale, “stone” succulent arrangements made in-house at The Greenery (Taken by Ian)

May 13, 2016 12 Comments
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Let’s Sell Emotional Values!

The phrase “The Value Proposition” is marketing-speak for “In return for your money (or effort or time etc.), you get this” and is worth more than an academic glance. Just look how the “Mad Men” in advertising have used that simple premise to help us all to part with our money for decades:

–          Concerned about that daunting list of side effects in a medication ad? (Sure, but just the idea of not sneezing every five minutes in spring makes it that a deal you can accept.)

–          Excited to turn over all your home TV and internet to one giant cable company? (No but you DO like the idea of watching whatever you want, when you want.)

These types of ads carefully craft a message of emotional benefits (the outcomes of the purchase), while the garden industry mostly still features the technical details. From propagator/manufacturer to retailer we see garden product ads, signs, labels or training manuals that are heavy on product functions (“Spreader-sticker” anyone?).

We see “Takes partial shade” instead of “Fill that bare spot under a tree” or “soaker hose” rather than “Waters gently like Mother Nature”. Maybe THAT’S why Americans spend more per household on Pizza than on gardening!

Marketers realized years ago that consumers spend more easily on emotional benefits than on functional ones. That’s why people drive miles to save gas money, so they can spend it at their favorite restaurant!

With competition from the smartest marketers on the planet, the lawn & garden business should spice-up the (sometimes necessary) technical language with words that suggest the product benefit (outcomes!) in simple emotional terms. We have highly marketable products with infinite emotions from excitement and joy, through pride and accomplishment, to solace and peace. We have things that taste great, clean the air, increase property values, reduce utility bills, create privacy, enrich lives and save the planet. But we still talk or merchandise to the public in technical or hobbyists terms. Just look at what “Mad Men” do with soap, drugs or insurance and think of what you could do with gardening!

So instead of “quick grower, 6ft by 5ft, $99” how about “Hide the neighbors for under $100”? Or for “3 months continuous feeding” substitute “Feed and forget” (with a 90 day reminder to buy more).

Train to Think Like the Customer

Team training should focus on the end result, not the process, as employees make the emotional value proposition: emphasizing the cool style of succulents or the fun of a child measuring a sunflower.

In training meetings I have found employees so anxious to tell the customer every single fact, they miss the essential motivator – the emotions of the end result. Stressing “things they need to know” means that emotional values like the fragrance of lilac or tasting that first tomato are missed. I even heard one experienced manager telling a customer “I think you’ll find it worth the effort” when she balked at digging a big hole for a shrub!

So let’s see more emotional values from the entire supply chain:

  • Let’s read about “A green lawn for 90% less than a lawn-care service” (money-saving is a MAJOR emotional benefit!)
  • Let’s see plant labels spelling out nostalgia like “Grandma’s Lilac” or the fragrance of Old Roses
  • Let’s suggest the environmental satisfaction of creating a Monarch haven
  • Let’s see POP with “Basil on your balcony” for apartment dwellers and “Hops made easy” for home-brewers.
  • Let’s hear employees talking of “Relaxing sounds of wind chimes” or a fountain that “Hides the sound of the dog next door”!
  • Let’s see displays that call out “Best herb for grilling steak” in the myriad of herb choices.
  • Let’s focus on those emotions that entice consumers to save on gas and spend it in this industry!

… and finally, let me know what you come up with: happy propositioning!

Photo by Ian, on the road somewhere

Apr 27, 2016 6 Comments
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Simplicity – A Twelve Point Test

 

In most of the USA and Europe, garden retail makes money for three months, breaks even for three and loses it for six! So it’s understandable that retailers want to expose their customers to as many products as possible. They even have a phrase for it; “Peak the Peaks!”

Add to that pressure, the constant supply of new or re-packaged products (don’t even get me started on the yearly deluge of new plant varieties) and the businesses are bursting at the seams. Aisles become narrow canyons deterring shoppers while inventory obscures signs meant to help. Everything is so jammed in, nothing stands out.

Time Crunched

Now see it like today’s customer. There are now fewer hobbyists who love discovery shopping and more time-crunched project shoppers. You can see them every spring, like deer in the headlights with 25 minutes (“tops”) to get what they need and get out of there. Faced with shelves of similar packets or benches of seemingly identical plants they are forced to read labels or bags (then go on-line to see if it’s true!) Sure they could wait for an equally stressed employee, who already has five others hovering around her and hasn’t had a break for 5 hours…

Customers don’t know what they don’t know so de-mystifying 5,000 to 20,000+ SKUs in 25 minutes is not the fun experience they expected. Choice can kill impulse and current garden retailing is SKU-ing customers to death (or at least into under-spending!)

The retailer must become the first “filter” of what shoppers need to complete their project. That is the real goal of a retail buyer; providing the sales team with a range of products already narrowed down for quick, easy-to-follow sales or merchandising. Are your buyers focused on that?

I know it is too late to thin out the shelves or cancel orders for this spring (maybe that’s a summer project before the 2017 buying season!) but use these questions to walk around each department. Consider your inventory through the eyes of today’s intrigued but hesitant consumer:

1.       Is pricing readily understood by all (or do customers have to ask someone)?

2.       Are customers led from impulse to wow to inspiration (or do they just wander around)?

3.       Is layout conducive to grab-and-go shopping?

4.       Are signs simple, fresh and understandable? (“4 in perennials” anyone…?)

5.       Is there a “Fun ideas for a weekend project” area to give ideas?

6.       Does the POP simplify shopping by narrowing down the choice to a few solutions?

7.       Is sales language simple and confident reflecting expertise and local knowledge?

8.       Do displays attract, inform and inspire in just a few seconds?

9.       Does merchandising say “look no further, this is what you need”?

10.   Are projects, such as planting an herb garden, sold as a one-stop kit of plants and hard goods?

11.   Is there a full-size mannequin, mature display bed or photo-banner to show the project’s end result?

12.   Overall, do the products and displays simplify customers’ options or just create more questions?

 

Let me know how it goes and stay tuned for next week’s blog post on making the emotional connection.

Photo credit: taken by Ian, showing the brilliant idea by the team at Weston Nurseries, MA

Apr 19, 2016 14 Comments
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Be Smart at the Mart

As the last of the “50% off” sales straggle to a sad end and intrepid buyers of all-things Christmas head for “Market” (as the Atlanta Gift Mart is euphemistically known), I thought it might be worth sharing some observations from the Holiday business 2015:

It seems to have been a happy Christmas season for most garden retailers, despite a falling stock market and a burgeoning on-line business. The spending patterns of the American consumer for 2015’s Christmas reflected the greater changes seen through the year by the independent garden retailers that we know. Average spend per customer in Nov/Dec was up on the previous year by a range of 2% to 12%, while the favorable weather across much of the country drove customer count up by an even higher range for the majority. While predictions for general retail spending in the Malls were modest, garden retailers seemed to beat the street. Did consumers trade savings at the pump for a bigger wreath? J.P. Morgan Chase says that the average household is saving over $260 per year on cheaper gas and that they will spend up to 80% of it!

What consumers spent their money on is important as buyers head for Atlanta and Dallas, hoping to predict what shoppers will drool over in 10 months’ time – never easy. Christmas merchandise has but one chance per year to wow the consumer.  It takes real talent to repurpose a Nutcracker as a garden gnome five months later!

Fresh Is “In”

Feedback from our networks and clients was of strong and consistent traffic across all regions, demographics and store sizes. Fresh was “in” everywhere. Fresh cut trees, greens, roping and wreaths the bigger the better, the more unique the better in all categories. Customized wreath-making stations were selling them as quickly as they could be made. Where buyers could find them, re-orders sold out on cut greens, wreaths and outdoor “Porch Pots”.

Meanwhile, artificial trees were only strong at the top of the price range and what was once the very essence of a retail Christmas, ornaments and collectibles, especially collectibles, languished inside many stores. This last category, known to some of my English friends as “landfill,” may have seen its best days for a while as the collectors of such things as nutcrackers, carolers, nativities, Victorian nostalgia and so on, fade away themselves. And younger consumer may be turning away from decorative “stuff”  to spend on other, more practical or experiential, things.

A Department That Keeps On Giving

Given the (expensive) buying expeditions underway to the shows it might be helpful to know what those other things are!

Sales of all sorts of personal items, presumably destined for under-the-tree gifts were very strong, but the key change here is from Christmas gifts to all year round gifts. As one owner said “I want something I can sell into March, not just up to Dec 25th!” Despite the warm weather affecting sales of winter-wear in the Malls, sales of scarves, gloves, socks, sweaters and jewelry in garden-stores were extremely good in Nov/Dec. Any retailer with new or unusual styles of existing items such as super-cold drink containers sold out, while local-made apparel, food and drink were hits across the country.

I am not sure if I have a conclusion from all this information as you work the booths at market but caution is advised; change is in the air for Christmas “gift” shopping.  One of the big winners at Christmas was gift cards for future experiences: eating out, concert tickets, classes (glassblowing, cocktail making, etc.) or taking a trip.

Take Care With Those Bears

Sure, consumers are still going to decorate with lights, trees, ornaments or swag and will still buy lots of “stuff”. They will still change color schemes and update their homes each holiday season. But the highlights of their spending now seem to be less on Christmas/Santa/Holiday themed products and more on giving personal all-round gifts or new exciting things not necessarily connected to the specific season. Consumers are going for “fresh,” honest and, where possible, local products if they give products at all.

Sooo, buy carefully in the next few weeks: it’s hard to turn the boat back to China once you have confirmed!

 

photo credit for the lit “future garden gnomes” above: Moonlightway via MorgueFile

Jan 14, 2016 4 Comments
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Last Child in the Garden?

As old friends and relatives would confirm, I was never a very gifted do-it-yourselfer. Though like many I wallpapered, painted and tiled my way through life until I could afford to pay someone else to do it. But being raised by über-hobbyist parents (a “workman” in our house was unthinkable) I had a choice of things to help Dad with and, no surprise, I chose gardening. Not because I had a love of plants, but because I just HAD to be outdoors.  If I wasn’t playing footy or tramping the moors, being Mum and Dad’s gardening go-fer was the next best thing.

So when I harvested over 40 yummy winter squash the other day, it was just another day in the year’s cycle. But some who see the picture are in awe. While this is great for the ego, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Should it? It’s not like I brought about world peace. I just stuck two seeds in the ground and applied water – easy for me!

We constantly hear of the challenge of getting younger people up off their you-know-what and into the woods, fields or even their own back stoop. Surveys suggest that Americans of all ages could be spending 12 hours or more per day in front of some kind of screen!

Screened–in?

If “gardening” is not to become something in old movies and family albums, the industry supply chain and all interested parties need to write their own future. Otherwise the consumer or society will write it for them. And that might not be good. The future of the $40+ billion DIY garden/outdoor living industry in the USA is in the hands of those driving it now.

Now the topic of “connecting kids with nature” is becoming a hot one, garden retailers of all shapes and channels should be emphasizing that nature starts with the first step outside. Typically kids experience a garden space before woods and trails. Let’s start them right in their own backyard.

Baby Steps – Literally

This idea is not new, but is taking years to activate. After years of “food gardening” being the only real growth sector, how many locally owned garden retailers are now the community leader in this core activity?

I don’t expect Home Depot or Lowe’s to plow up parking lots and install how-to community veg gardens any time soon. But over half of the independents I know have spare land somewhere adjacent to retail. Many outdoor sales areas are too large, filled with slow-turning inventory. Why not become the place for parents and families to learn the ultimate screen-time antidote?

Why have long-standing, community–based “nurseries” not established themselves as the place with community gardens and local know-how? Why not partner with a local farmer or non-profit who wants to show their crops growing nearer to the market?

The “eating local” trend has opened up many opportunities for the smart, nimble independent.  Back-to-natural emphasis by “big retailers” from cotton to coffee brings added possibilities for garden retailers to become the local thought-leader. If corporate America is talking about bees and monarchs, can’t local nurseries use this to get the community off the couch?

Do you know how cool we could be?

With the clear trend away from DIY tree and shrub planting, America is set for years of decorating outdoor space and/or food gardening but most outside sales areas don’t reflect that. There is little if any emphasis on such entry-level successes as growing a few radish let alone squash. Garden center websites still feature trees, shrubs, roses and the like with little emphasis on “owning” the secrets to catching a firefly, photographing a hummingbird or growing milkweed for monarchs.

In the last decade the Home Centers have dominated garden retailing to which some purists still say “that was our industry, our product.”  As corporate America begins to put the pieces together for the consumer’s foray into nature, I would hate to hear similar cries of “We were the original outdoor retailers, we should have done that!”

Yes we were, yes we should.

So who has progress to report?

Reading Recommendation (& Title Reference):  The Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv

Photo credit:  Ian Baldwin

Nov 17, 2015 4 Comments

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