For Compact City Gardening

Greenhouse Grower's One To Watch Jennifer Kurtz displayed the Urban Gardener program at the Kurtz Farms booth. Urban Gardener offers hard goods, products and ideas for gardens of all shapes and sizes. Urban Gardener plant tags come with a unique identification number.

Search for that number on the Urban Gardener website for more information about the variety purchased. This is a great idea for a young garden base that is both unfamiliar with gardening and tech savvy.

At the show, Urban Gardener showed off the Tomato Cage, a compact trellis for growing tomatoes or other vines.

Novalis Expands Edibles Line

I really enjoyed visiting Novalis this year at Short Course. The consortium's booth was actually a bunch of smaller booths that highlighted its growers, including Willoway Nursery and Carolina Nurseries.

This setup helped each operation feature what it specializes in, together covering the whole Novalis offering. The displays included the expanded Plants That Work In The Kitchen line, which now includes herbs, small fruits and retail-ready veggies.

"Novalis has developed innovative packaging for use with Plants That Work In The Kitchen," says J. Guy, manager and founder of Novalis. "Brand-based bench displays with engaging header signs, inviting bench cards and large-format mesh banners can be custom printed for retailers."

The packaging for the line includes six-pack trays, so retailers can offer customers medleys of garden herbs.

Other new exclusives for 2010 are:

• Rainbow Sensation Weigela, an improved, variegated weigela with compact growth and soft-pink trumpet flowers.
  
• 'Hot Summer' coneflower, with a mango-colored bloom that fades to an orange-red.
• Chasmanthium 'River Mist,' a variegated white and green striped foliage.
  
• Leucanthemum 'Banana Cream,' a bright yellow Shasta daisy for the perennial border.
  

Murphy Wins!

The competition was tough, but Murphy Hendy of A Proper Garden in Delaware, Ohio (sponsored by Today's Garden Center) came out victorious in the first Merchandising Contest at Short Course.

He wowed the crowd with an amazing cloth waterfall and whimsical fish and "bubbles" to complement the plant material and meet the requirement of the "Fun In The Sun" theme.

He battled head-to-head with Tina Bemis from Bemis Farms in Central Massachusetts, who did a fun and fresh display of planted-up colorful watering cans. She even incorporated The Wedgie, her favorite planting tool.

Scott Daly of Homestead Gardens in Davidsonville, Md., took home the People's Choice award for his terra-cotta inspired display.

All of the contestants were amazing, and set the bar high for next year's competition. I see good things for this event and hope it continues to grow. Special thanks to Murphy for all his hard work (and to A Proper Garden owner Bob Van Cura for sending him!).

Grower Town Hall: Differentiate Or Die

Members of the media aren't allowed to quote anyone who attends the Grower Town Hall directly, but there were lots of interesting ideas flying around at Short Course on Sunday night. Here's some of the highlights on the session, which discussed the next steps of our industry's life cycle.

The panel featured ag economist Charlie Hall, Goldsmith's Faith Savage, Brian Minter of Minter Country Garden, consultant Laurie Scullin, Sid Raisch of Horticultural Advantage and Lisa Takao-McCall of Takao Nursery.

• "We're mature, in more ways than one. In such cases, unless an industry redefines itself, it finds itself in its last stages."
  
  
• ANLA is focusing on improving the perceived value of plants in two ways: Developing landscaping as a financial asset, something to invest in; and the ecosystems services value of plants, which is that trees that purify the air and plants that purify the water.
  
  
• We need to make sure plants are relevent for the customer. They want to know what's in it for them. Tell customer that dollar for dollar, the investment they make in landscaping has a bigger ROI than any other investment they can make. Other types of home renovation investments are declining right now, actually. The opportunity is to work together to get the consumer to understand the benefit of gardening. How do we get that message out?
  
  
• The common thinking is that if we lower the price on plants, we'll continue to sell as many units. Actually, the opposite is true. If we raise prices, we'll sell just as many plants, if not more. The number one way to increase the image of plants is to stop advertising based on discount.
  
  
• How do we get the younger generation interested in plants? Young people trust celebrities more than any vendor. Young people have connected with cooking through the Food Network celebrities like Rachel Ray. This year, young people having their first connection to the political sphere have followed Michelle Obama's lead and started vegetable gardens.
  
  
• How do we leverage new Internet and social networking technology? Jump in and get started. We are losing transactions because some people aren't getting our message in newspapers and on television. We need to communicate with people the way they want to hear our message.
  
  

Let Your Customers Tell Your Story

Marketing and customer service consultant Ron Rosenberg closed a jam-packed, Sunday afternoon-long series of sessions on marketing with a presentation on writing creating great marketing materials.
One of his best suggestions was to make better use of testimonials. Most of us already know that word of mouth is one of the best forms of advertising, but not many people make the best use of it, he said.

Rosenberg had several suggestions to help growers and retailers do testimonials right:
1. People are naturally suspicious of blind testimonials. Make sure you include the name of the person providing the praise for your business or product, along with their job title, location, and if possible, their website.

2. Tell a story. Make sure the testimonial explains how your business helped them make money, live a better life, etc.

3. A great way to get testimonials is to ask for them. Ask you customers to complete a customer service survey, and be sure to ask questions like "Why did you choose to work with us?" or "What was the best part of your experience?" The answers they provide can be instant - and glowing - testimonials.

TGC Merchandiser Wins Round 1

Congratulations to Murphy Hendy, merchandiser from A Proper Garden (and sponsored by Today's Garden Center) for winning the first round of the Merchandising Contest! He put together an amazing display of gift product centered around a sage green theme.

He was up against Dan Truesdale from Rolling Green Nursery, who did a fantastic display of Proven Winners plants. The competition was pretty tight.

Don't miss Monday's competition at 11 a.m. between Tina Bemis of Bemis Farms and Scott Daly of Homestead Gardens. It'll be another tough contest. The winner from tomorrow will battle it out with Murphy on Tuesday at 11 a.m.

Great job all on a fun, friendly competition. The contest is a great addition to Short Course, and we look forward to participating in it for years to come!

Transitioning The Business

The greatest piece of advice panelists offered Sunday when it came to succession planning? Communication.

Know what each generation needs to succeed after the plan is in place, and communicate the plan effectively to everyone involved.

On an individual basis, panelist Delores Steinhauser shared her story of buying her father’s garden center in South Carolina, Wingard’s Nursery & Garden Center. They had an attorney draw up a contract to insure everyone involved knew the plan. They valued the business based on the inventory and set up a payment plan for rent of the property.

Her advice to other retailers? “Think through the details of how you want the transition to look,” she said. She also said to consider buying the business rather than one generation gifting it to the next.

Carinne Peters of JR Peters Inc. said her family enlisted the help of a consultant provided by a local university program supported by grant funding at Lehigh University. They were able to lay out the process of the transition for free.

Tracking Inventory Through POS

Do you have a mountain of inventory in your retail shop? The money tied up in that inventory isn't in bank feeding cash flow. Do you know the carrying cost of inventory as a percentage of your costs? Steve Bailey asked that question of Wilson's Garden Center's Ned Wilson, Rice's Nursery & Landscaping's Steve Maddox and Altum's Garden Center's Karen Thacker. Here are some tips from them on how they use POS for better inventory management.

• Hire a data entry person to enter purchase orders. “Too many fingers in that pie cause problems,” Wilson says.

• Rice's has added the margin on each product to its purchase order. “We need to know before it's received what the margin is going to be,” Maddox says. “As keepers of inventory, we need to find the average cost.” Maddox says Rice's used to just look at margins in the winter, but now can look on the fly during the season.

• Thacker says if you can get inventory reports on a weekly basis, only make purchases of two to three weeks of inventory. "It gives enough overage if you sell more than in weeks past. If you're trending more on a certain fertilizer, you need to use gut and order for that. Don't just go by the numbers.”

• Dead and slow-moving inventory reports are important, although it can be scary to see exactly how much inventory isn't moving.
  “We usually buy based on emotions and then rationalize what we buy,” Wilson says. When you see what you're not selling, you eventually have to swallow your pride and get rid of it.”

• Altum's tracks its top 100 customers based on sales. POS helps the store track who hasn't shopped lately, so a staffer can call and welcome the customer back to the store.

• Rice's has 7,000 to 8,000 active loyalty program customers. Maddox says the number of customers buying more is increasing and the number of customers buying less is decreasing.

Takao Takes Over As OFA President

Danny Takao, president of Takao Nursery in Fresno, Calif., officially took the reins of the OFA presidency Saturday from Bobby Barnitz. Here are Takao’s first words as president, addressed to an audience at the OFA Awards and Keynote Presentation:

“OFA continues to provide a community where we can all gather to share our lives and thoughts. Some people have told me associations and trade shows are a thing of the past. I argue otherwise. I have but no other gathering where we can all share the same passion and lifestyle – and share the networking we do here at the Short Course.

“Your current board of directors will continue to work with our committees and staff to make sure our OFA community remains strong and relevant to your needs.

“Our industry is evolving rapidly. Alone, it would be very difficult to understand all the dynamics reshaping it. With support from our OFA community, using the knowledge and extra speakers we have access to, we can learn together how we need to go forward to keep our companies healthy.”

Purchasing For Profits

Retailer Andy Buyting of Green Village Home & Garden gave a great presentation on smart buying for the garden center. "Purchasing," he says, "is where the first profits are made."
One tip from Andy: Never, ever, ever pay sticker price for anything. Ask for a better price, better terms, whatever. But the key is to ask.
"Don't look at it as a negative thing where you're trying to take advantage of your suppliers," he says. "You're working together as partners to move more product, for them and for you."
It's a win-win situation for both parties and as you build a relationship that helps you both, you'll become a client of choice.

Off To A Good Start

Only four hours in and Short Course is already off to a positive start. Attendance is pretty good for the morning educational sessions. Just ran into OFA's Laura Kunkle, who said registration was up for the show this year. That's great news considering all we've been through with the economy this year. Hopefully the really loud thunderstorm that's rolling through Columbus right now won't keep anybody away.

Jennifer Polanz is on the Retail Bus Tour visiting area garden centers, and the rest of our editors are sitting in sessions all day today. We'll be checking in here and on Twitter throughout the day to let you know what we're hearing.

Oh, and the Greenhouse Grower/Today's Garden Center team finished third in the Dramm 5K Relay this morning. Photos will be showing up here at some point I'm sure. Not that we're excited or anything....