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Plants fall in and out of favor, thanks in large part to media outlets such as home-improvement television shows and gardening and home decor magazines. It’s not the end of the world, it’s business. But repeat flat or sagging sales require swift action.
Adapting to an ever-changing market and a parade of fickle consumers will keep cash flow fluid.
Pay attention
“Growers need to open their eyes and get in tune with what the consumer wants,” said Jason Rekker, territory manager for Eastern Ontario at
During the last few years, some of Valleybrook’s retail customers told Rekker that consumers were buying hanging baskets, popping out the larger plants and putting them in the ground.
“The consumer wanted an 8- to 10-inch plant, but growers in the Ontario area continued to complain they weren’t making money on cell packs. So it’s not that consumers didn’t want more perennials, growers just weren’t giving them what they wanted,” he said.
Valleybrook Gardens fought shrinking markets head-on with branding programs such as Jeepers Creepers and Rock Stars.
“We met a perceived need and supported it with packaging and marketing,” he said.
And brands have helped seriously boost sales not only across the board but with individual plants. The company was considering dropping production of pink pussy-toes (Antennaria spp.) because of lackluster sales. But when Valleybrook included it in the Jeepers Creepers line, sales went up 500 percent in the first year.
“The quality was the same, but the packing and the target market changed,” Rekker said.
Valleybrook’s retail customers have learned the importance of the grower’s brand. Rock Stars, Valleybrook’s newest program, is completely sold out for 2007.
Solid footing
Frances Hopkins, founder of Under A Foot Plant Co. and the Stepables brand, created a wildly successful national brand from a generic line of groundcovers.
“Stepables came about when I jumped up and down on a plant at my nursery for a landscaper. He didn’t believe the plant would take foot traffic, so I proved him wrong,” Hopkins said. “He exclaimed, ‘They’re stepables,’ and a brand was born.”
Plants in the Stepables line are accompanied by specialty tags, pots and point-of-purchase material.
“All the elements must be in place to gain the maximum sales potential and brand recognition,” she said. “A product like Stepables needs an explanation and a guide. People are unaccustomed to walking on their plants. Without any POP to accompany the plants, the consumer is left to their own thoughts and creative possibilities.”
The garden center should consider POP to be its “absolute easiest, most inexpensive employee,” she said. “For less than $200 a year, the POP will sell thousands of dollars of merchandise and never need a break, call in sick or ignore a customer.”
With any branded plant, the retailers need to give a product more than one season and consistently display the POP, she said.
“Building brand loyalty with consumers takes time. The message needs to be delivered over and over for it to take hold,” she said.
Baby steps
If you’re not ready to create your own brand, start with some basic POP.
Put together a collection of 20 drought-tolerant perennials, make a poster that identifies them as drought tolerant, and ask garden center customers to keep the plants with the poster, Rekker said.
“That hardly costs anything, and it will help overwhelmed consumers narrow down their choices based on specific needs,” Rekker said.
It’s hard to sell a plant before or after it blooms, but packaging drives sales regardless of bloom time, Hopkins said.
“The more we can entice consumers to buy our products by differentiation, the more individual products can take hold,” she said.
A grower can always piggy-back with an existing brand by paying royalties or being a “certified grower,” Rekker said.
All dressed up
Glitter and paint have become a floral after-market product for some growers and distributors. Gussied up poinsettias, mums and roses are hitting the market, especially around holidays.
Ball Seed answered the trend with Ball Bling, a program featuring paint and glitter for poinsettias, mums and foliage plants, said Mike Schoen, business manager of Ball Bling.
A large part of Ball Bling surrounds holiday sales with its Yuletide Collection for poinsettias and Haunted Collection for mums. And Ball is developing more colors to accommodate other holidays, such as Ball Bling Irish Green for St. Patrick’s Day. But it’s not all about holiday sales, Schoen said.
“Ultimately our goal is for the grower to find niche markets such as school events and capture the home decor market,” Schoen said.
Kerry Herndon, owner of Kerry’s Bromeliad Nursery, is using the Ball Bling kit on tropicals, including ivy, sansevieria, bromeliads and orchids.
“I saw it at the Super Floral Show and said, ‘Why not? Let’s have some fun,’” Herndon said. “The industry has spent years boring the customer to death. If you look in an issue of Vogue, there’s a different fashion featured every month. We’ve got to become part of home fashion and make plants fun and exciting.”
Dutch grower Kwekerij Sassen has a new line of flowers with “cosmetic makeovers.” Colour on Top features roses, mums and calla lilies adorned with paint, glitter and other fancy treatments. Program names include Glitter, Marshmallow, Satin, Snowy Mountain, Bling Bling, Crystal and Grand Prix.
“We’re adding value to flowers with reverence to nature,” owner Marc Sassen said.
The Colour on Top program is available through the Dutch flower auctions.
Differentiate, don’t distress
Although poinsettias continue to generate the largest sales value among potted flowering plants, according to the USDA, the number of growers producing that crop continues to decline. For several growers, poinsettias became synonymous with shrinking markets.
“Quite a few growers got out of the market, which provided a little self-correction,” said Jack Williams, international product manager at Ecke Ranch. “With less oversupply, you get a real supply.
“Growers take different approaches when faced with shrinking markets: Give up because it’s not making you any money; lower prices, which hasn’t served anyone well; or differentiate your product with specialty programs.”
Ecke created specialty programs surrounding its poinsettia crop to add interest and generate more revenue.
Visions of Grandeur was Ecke’s foray into specialty programs with higher-priced cuttings and POP. In 2006, Ecke launched Ice Punch in select Home Depot markets. Ice Punch features rosy-red bracts with a soft frosty-white center and was packaged in a gold and paisley pot cover. It will appear in Home Depot stores nationally in 2007.
Ecke also bred ‘Renaissance Red,’ a cut poinsettia with curled bracts, stems up to 30 inches long and a long vaselife. It’s marketed by the Fred C. Gloeckner Co.
“Specialty programs must be visually dynamic so the consumer will pay extra for it,” Williams said.
For more:
A marketing mystery
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Toyota Scion purposely limited its production of the popular vehicle in 2007 to keep it “cool.” Part of the car maker’s marketing strategy was to keep sales from going higher than 150,000 units.
SPIN Farming helps small plots turn profits
Think you need to double your greenhouse space to take advantage of expanding markets? Not so, says one veteran vegetable grower. Small Plot Intensive, or SPIN Farming, is intensive urban agriculture on sub-acre tracts, said SPIN creator Wally Satzewich. His method makes it possible to generate $50,000 in gross sales from a half-acre by growing common vegetables, he said.
“A sub-acre farmer can make the same living as a large-scale farmer with less stress and overhead, and with more certainty of success from year to year,” he said. Satzewich teaches participants how to:
* Create a sub-acre farm with minimal infrastructure.
* Apply revenue targeting formulas to produce a dependable revenue stream.
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* Develop direct marketing channels to ensure higher income.
* Balance high-value and low-value crops to produce a sophisticated product line.
For more: www.spinfarming.com.
- Kelli Rodda
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Ability to adapt helps growers combat shrinking markets
Bridget Behe,
Products, like people and plants, go through a life cycle. So, it is to be expected that some products will be coming on strong while others are fading in popularity. The length of that life cycle is hard to predict. We’d love to have products in demand as long as Tide or Ivory. Thankfully, the life cycle is longer than ice cream novelty products (about three months or one summer).
It is hard, at the height of one’s success, to look for different products or different ways of doing business. This is a reality, regardless of the business or industry in which we operate. Even us academicians have adapted to changes happening in our environments, such as shrinking university budgets, more competition for grant funds and teaching more. So, the ability to adapt and be prepared to adapt is what separates the successful from the marginal.
Exactly which markets are shrinking varies from market to market. I’m advocating growers and retailers plot the sales curves for as many products as they can. They know the decline in rate of growth will come, but we can plot it nicely and anticipate when that might come. Certainly the market for some very visible products has matured, if not declined. The 6-inch poinsettia is a good example. However, to say that all poinsettias are in the mature phase would be wrong. Highlighted or glittered poinsettias are growing products for some retailers. Are they charging more? I sure hope so.
You can anticipate change and be ready before your products decline and margins evaporate. Yes, you need to change crops, but change for what might be the next profitable line for your market. This is why an understanding of customers in your own backyard is so critical. We don’t have enough consumer research to help businesses. We need much more.
Bridget Behe is a professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Horticulture, (517) 355-5191, Ext. 1346, behe@msu.edu.
Strive to be a leader, not a follower
Jim Iwasaki, Iwasaki Bros. Inc.
As a means to expand our markets, we continue to push our brand and logo, which we launched about six years ago.
The yellow and green logo is a stylized flower pot with Japanese characters that represent Iwasaki. We’ve been told by the retailers and the consumers that our logo is associated with high quality.
We also build small programs around the core brand, such as Herbs for Life. That’s been a very successful program.
It’s important to be a leader in the industry. We stick with what we do well and attempt to stay within our core production area instead of branching head-long into new adventures.
We increased the size of our containers in the premium annuals line from a 4-inch to a 4 1/4-inch round container. I was against it at first, but that little, incremental difference has provided a better sell-through.
We continue to put energies and resources behind upgrading the facilities. This past summer we opened a new Nexus greenhouse.
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Stability in our company helps us take advantage of expanding markets. My two daughters, Theresa and Julie, represent the fourth generation of our family business.
Jim Iwasaki is managing partner at Iwasaki Bros. Inc., (503) 640-2734, www.iwasaki-bros.com.
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