Since 1953, The Stables Garden Center in North Babylon, New York, has been a steady resource to gardeners in and around the surrounding area. Along with seasonal annuals, evergreens, deciduous trees and more, they also carry multiple lines of lawn care and fertilizers, with the most popular being the GreenView Fairway Formula from the Lebanon Seaboard Corporation.

“Since I’ve been working, GreenView has always been here and has always had a good following,” says Ralph Capurso, grandson of the original Ralph Capurso who founded The Stables Garden Center.

Although The Stables Garden Center has sold five lines of fertilizers over the years, Capurso says the GreenView Fairway Formula has always been a superior product for his business and for customers.

“It’s a high-performance fertilizer. It’s long lasting and you don’t have to do that many applications,” Capurso says. “Since the late ‘70s, the following on the product has just naturally kept growing. Repeat customers recommend the fertilizer to people and I barely sell [other fertilizers] now.”

Capurso thinks the GreenView Fairway Formula Lawn Care line is successful at The Stables because many independent garden centers in his area don’t carry lawn care supplies, along with testimonials from real people that others trust.

“It’s to the point now where people just walk in and pick it up,” Capurso says. “Or, I’ll have customers come in with photos on their phones showing me pictures and say, ‘This is what my friend uses, and they told me to come here.’ I think too, the Fairway Formula packaging is top shelf. It’s eye catching; it’s quality and people remember it easily. You just gravitate towards it.”

Capurso realized the power of GreenView’s Fairway Formula about 11 years ago when The Stables Garden Center’s second location closed in Farmingville, New York. After taking leftover products to the North Babylon store —which is a larger location — Capurso began to grasp the demand for the fertilizer.

“In a nutshell, in the 2009 season, I only had a couple pallets of product. In the 2019 season, I’m probably going to sell 65-70 pallets of Fairway Formula, so that’s the growth that I’ve had since 2009.”

And that increased unit volume translates to increased profits.

Homeowners get premium, professional results with less work when they use GreenView Fairway Formula lawn care products. With just two applications required for most lawns - spring & fall - these products reduce by half, the number of applications required by traditional step programs. The secret is the proprietary slow-release nitrogen technologies which provide continuous even greening for up to 12 weeks. The slow-release nitrogen percentages in this product line range between 59-63% slow release, which is unprecedented.

“It’s less applications, it lasts longer and it’s just a superior product,” Capurso says. “The people who use it just get hooked on it and it’s all word-of-mouth from there ... The reason why it has legs to it is because it works.”

City Farmers Nursery in San Diego, California, is a family-owned garden center and nursery specializing in items not commonly found in chain stores. Priding themselves on having a balanced selection, the small business strives to be a community leader in their field. Doing so has led them to carrying Smart Pots, a product that not only pleases customers but has brought profitability.

Smart Pots is a single category that drives sales and profits in several others. A customer buying a Smart Pot should also buy soil, plants, fertilizer, they also may need stakes, plant ties, saucers etc.. Smart Pots drive sales and profits in multiple categories.

“There are a lot of advantages to it,” says Bill Tall, founder of City Farmers Nursery. “First off, they offer easy transportation. When dumping dirt, the overturn is lessened. They also have a means of letting any access material leak out, and the newer stuff has a rectangular shape to fit on balconies and such.”

The product is a general problem-solver when it comes to customers, Tall says. If anyone comes with a potting issue that the product could help with, it’s an easy suggestion that customers often opt for.

A strong testament to the product’s popularity is how long City Farmers has carried them. “We’ve just had them for so long. It would have to be since our first-ever trade show, so at least a decade if not more,” Tall says.

Part of the appeal is the fact that customer dissatisfaction is a rarity. Smart Pots’ focus on quality has helped build a good business-customer connection.

“People keep buying them and always tell us how pleased they are,” Tall says. “A lot of times, people will buy the pots even if they already have plants and transfer them.”

City Farmers sees a decent profit margin and is happy with the market. Generally everything they offer has sold well, especially the pots, and there have been no distressing expenses encountered.

Customer support plays a role to City Farmers’ success with the Smart Pots brand. Any inquiry about the products are properly noted so it can be handled with future production. It’s not as much dealing with newer implementations “as much as it is keeping up with the times,” Tall says.

When it comes to marketing, City Farmers handles this mostly themselves. Despite Smart Pots’ popularity, it’s sometimes in City Farmers’ best interest to make suggestions tailored to requests. This ensures customers are being offered the right product and of the best quality.

“We do our own,” Tall says. “They’ll give me a new product to sell and I do my best to show people how things are growing.”

Molbak’s Garden + Home is a garden center that’s truly focused on customer experience. The store, located in Woodinville, Washington, offers home and gift items, outdoor living, garden gear, and design and landscaping services. The IGC also offers all kinds of events and workshops, and Russell’s Garden Café & Wine Bar which serves up refreshments for shoppers.

Molbak’s has been carrying Glenhaven Home & Holiday products since 2015, says Heather Smith, who notes increasing margin as one of the main benefits of working with the company, along with the ability to develop exclusive products. “The opportunity to meet and speak directly with the manufacturers allows for a better understanding of the products we sell, and how they are made,” she says.

Like many other IGCs, Molbak’s competes with not only big box stores and online retailers, it also competes with popular apparel brands and gift and home stores.

The company has a special team of merchandisers who keep displays fresh and work to really connect with its customers wants and needs. Glenhaven Home & Holiday buying tours help them keep their shelves full of products customers want.

 “The staff at Glenhaven is very responsive, and work well with our buying, accounting, and receiving departments to keep product flowing smoothly to our sales floor,” Smith says. “The buying trips are very well organized. Suppliers are well vetted before buyers arrive, and translators and detailed itineraries allow us to cover a lot of ground efficiently.”

Having the right data on production and inventory has been a game-changer for Petitti Garden Centers, helping them stock, staff and sell. Accurate information on everything from peak times to what’s on the tables to which promotions are performing well, the Northeast Ohio garden centers are using Epicor’s Retail Management Solutions to boost their profits.

“Without those tools, we’d be sunk,” says A.J. Petitti, president.

Petitti Garden Centers produces 90% of what they sell, and overproducing used to be a big headache for the nine regional stores. Accurate inventory data goes directly to the production model, helping them determine what’s moving, what’s not and what they need more of in real time.

That means less waste, less labor maintaining extra product and less stress on teams to bring in extra materials. And at the end of the day, they can evaluate mistakes, overproduction and waste.

“Now we’ll go through days where we’ll process tens of thousands of transactions in one day and it’ll be smooth as silk,” Petitti says. “And so the product flows in when you need it, it’s sold, it’s replenished and everything just works really well.”

And on busy weekends like Mother’s Day, having accurate data is invaluable. The store will sell 35,000 baskets in just two hours, so without information on everything from inventory, sales, distribution and logistics, it wouldn’t be possible, Petitti says.

“So by having that good information, by having those good systems and practices in place, we’re able to flow that information out from 7 to 9 a.m., sell that quantity of baskets and then by the time 9 a.m. starts, the store looks perfect,” he says. “It looks like nothing was shopped and you’re ready to go about your day for Mother’s Day weekend like nothing happened.”

There are surprises every year at Petitti but by establishing and tracking trends, they can see the effects of promotions and displays outside of gross sales. They can track not only what’s going out the door, but what each customer is taking along with a sale item, whether it’s another plant, some garden decor, a container or supplies to help that plant thrive.

“If we’re running 50% off on lilacs, you can see if they’re just buying that one lilac or if our team is really doing a good job of upselling the steps for success and having the soil, having the fertilizer with that lilac,” Petitti says.

Petitti Garden Centers is constantly trying new promotions to see what works whether it’s a gift card deal, a percent off sale or something else. But to know if it’s something they should try again, they have to look at how sales performed.

Having the tools to measure each sale’s efficacy, financial return and boost in sales determines which sales they’ll run again and which ones flopped.

“Running a promotion isn’t just about selling lilacs at 50% off; it’s about getting traffic in, introducing hopefully new customers to your store, capturing their information and also really upselling and inspiring them to do more in the landscape instead of just selling lilacs,” he says.

When you’re planning your budget for the year, analyzing your peak times and planning out your staffing, you have to really dig into the data again, Petitti says. From ramping up for the busy season to scaling back during slower periods, that information is key to staffing and stocking decisions throughout the year.