The New England Grows trade show floor was packed with industry pros
Wednesday, as an estimated 6,500 people participated in first-day activities,
according to Virginia Wood, executive director. "When we get the final numbers
added up, this might be a record crowd for the first day," Wood said. "We're very
encouraged by this year's turnout."
New England Grows celebrated its 20th anniversary by opening to a near-record, first-day crowd Wednesday, as an estimated 6,500 industry professionals filed into the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center to take in a packed slate of trade show and educational activities.
The premier event on Day One was the second annual “Garden Center Success” program, which drew around 500 retailers, who heard a half dozen business experts from inside and outside the industry share their best strategies for success. Among the highlights:
• Keynote speaker Bill Taylor, a noted author and entrepreneur, told retailers in the audience to find something special that they can do better than anyone else – and then to turn it into a competitive advantage. “The middle of the road has become the road to nowhere,” said Taylor, who related a story about U.S. presidents who became great – and whose greatness could be summed up by a single, notable accomplishment.
For instance, he said, while Abraham Lincoln accomplished many things during his time in the White House, his legacy was that he preserved the Union and did away with slavery. The presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, likewise, was marked by many achievements, but his footnote in history was the notion that he lifted the country out of its worst depression and helped win World War II. “The question you need to ask yourself,” Taylor said, “is what’s your sentence?”
• Chad Harris, owner of The Garden Gates in Metairie, La., also challenged the crowd to be courageous enough to take chances and to deliver quality products and customer service that competitors can’t match. As an example, he cited his store’s recent holiday season, when the staff delivered every tree it sold, half of them with lights attached, and sold more trees than it had in the store’s history.
Harris, who authored Garden Center magazine's Success Series column in 2011, said his garden center has weathered, literally, two tornadoes and three hurricanes – as well as a devastating fire – over the past decade. Nevertheless, using a virtually matchless perseverance and mounting a revolutionary marketing campaign based on social media platforms, the staff at The Garden Gates turned the store into an enterprise that not only is regularly honored as one of the nation’s premier retail outlets but one that continues to turn record profits. “Never forget the one thing that matters most to your business:,” Harris said, “the bank account. We’re constantly looking for the best way to turn that question the customer asks us on the phone into a way to get her into the store.”
• The third main speaker, Kimberly Sevilla, owns Rose Red & Lavender, an urban garden center in Brooklyn, N.Y., not exactly a gardening hotbed. Yet, by cultivating an interest in gardening among the previously un-tapped Millennial Generation, Sevilla has turned a tiny store in the heart of the city into a destination spot for 20-somethings.
The key, she said, is learning what makes this generation of gardeners tick, particularly with regard to the way it approaches gardening. Sevilla said that because Generation X hasn’t been a fertile demographic for many garden centers due to the fact that many 30-somethings never developed a passion for the pursuit, it is imperative for retailers to reach Gen X’s successors. Sevilla does that by offering unique plant options, by tapping her customers’ yen for products that give back to the environment – and by speaking their language.
“We blog, we do e-mail blasts, we use Facebook and other social media platforms,” Sevilla said. “Research shows that it takes up to seven impressions for the average person to remember your brand, so we talk to them in the ways they communicate – on a daily basis – to try to educate them and entice them to visit our store for the answers to their questions.”
• Between the extended seminar sessions, “Garden Center Success” featured “Real Time” mini-talks, during which retailers in the New England area shared some of their better strategies. Robin Struck, owner of D R Struck Landscape Nursery in Winthrop, Maine, said her store had enjoyed success with the hosting of “by invitation only” Ladies Nights Out. Food, drink, entertainment and socializing mark these events, but Struck said she struck gold, as it were, when she began offering Swag Bags to the first 25 women who showed up.
At the first event at which they were offered, well over 50 people were gathered outside the door before opening. “You’d have thought we were giving out concert tickets,” Struck said. While the events proper made some profit and helped the garden center bond with customers, the ultimate payoff came when one of the women – a guest of an invited customer – was so taken by the event that she hired Struck’s landscaping team to design and maintain her yard, a multi-thousand-dollar endeavor.
Rich Clark, president of New England Grows and owner of Clark Farms in Wakefield, R.I., said he called on an unusual consultant to help boost business during the usually slow fall season: his son, Perry. The youngster offered several fun suggestions – a hay ride, animals in the yard, and a giant slide, among them – and now Clark Farms actually flourishes in the fall. “It was a pretty good investment,” Clark said. “And you know how I pay him? With Leggos.”
Finally, Mike Skillin, co-owner of Skillins Greenhouses in Falmouth, Maine, urged the audience to implement a multi-faceted social media campaign to attract and keep customers. During a Q&A on the subject with Cameron Bonsey, director of marketing with Coast of Maine Organic Products, Skillin revealed that he did e-mails before e-mails were cool, establishing a rapport with customers that competitors couldn’t match. Now, he has expanded his social media campaign to include a Facebook page that reaches a new generation of customers and potential customers. “Customer interaction is so important to a business, especially now,” he said. “When the customers feel as if they’re part of what you do, they become almost like family.”
New England Grows continues Thursday and runs through Friday. The next report will focus on some of the hotter products on display on the trade show floor.