The Blogging Nurseryman by Trey Pitsenberger

Love ‘em or not, sales representatives from wholesale nurseries or garden supply wholesale business are part of our industry. Good ones get to know the customer (me) and guide us to items we might have missed, or take care of problems before they escalate. The bad ones make you want to run and hide. In my career there was one sales rep for a wholesale nursery based out of Irvine, California who would make you cringe when he came through the door. He was caught up in the “used car” sales routine and would constantly ask why I didn’t want certain items and generally make you feel uncomfortable.. Thank goodness we don’t have any of those types that visit us anymore. The sales reps that visit us are good people, doing a good job. .

I think in the future just being good will not be enough. You will have to be “great.” A great sales person will learn what they can about their customer’s before calling on them the first time. Besides finding out about a potential customer through conversations with the former sales rep, if that’s possible, one way to learn more about a customer is check out their web page. It amazing what you can find out.

For instance if you check out our web page you will see we have a blog. You would also find out that we got hit by the cold from last week and suffered some damage. Now if I was a sales rep., and found out about this very important information I would sure as heck make sure my client knew that my company and myself were concerned. “What can we do to help?”. Not that I would expect any company but us to absorb the loss of the plants, it’s just nice to know that they sympathize and are keeping up with our nursery news.

The interesting thing is no one has said anything! They don’t know what happened because they haven’t done their research. When a representative from a major nursery co-op comes to my store to solicit our business, but admits she doesn’t know what a blog is, how anxious am I to get involved with this organization. All they have to do is look up our web page and learn. Checking out a companies web page on a regular basis should be done by every sales representative, especially before calling. If they haven’t, I would think twice about doing business with that organization.

The era of just being a order taker ended a while ago. Some haven’t gotten the message. No, I don’t need sales representatives calling on me more. I like the system we have in place right now. It’s just I think that if you want to be a successful sales representative, you need to learn about your clients and keep on learning. If your a business owner ask the sales representative next time they are in what they think of your web site, or a blog post you did earlier. Not finding out all you can about a potential client through the medium we are using for “getting the word out” shows a lack of understanding about the modern world of business. How anxious am I to get involved with a company like that?

Its hard to keep up anymore with the proliferation of gardening blogs and gardening social sites. Over at Garden Rant Susan introduces us to a new soicial site, at least to me. MyFolia comes to us from a couple of web developers/gardeners in England. Meanwhile Stuart has his excellent Blotanical from Australia, and of course Garden Web from the U.S. I know there must be more, and that’s a problem. I can’t keep up.

Of course the fact that I can’t keep up with all the gardening blogs, plus social sites is my own problem. These sites are put together nicely and serve a purpose. I get loads of visitors from Blotanical, for which I am thankful. I try to check into my plot now and then, but there is just so much time in the day.

Whats a person going to do?

Thats a real problem for those of us that are trying to get people to take notice of our web site, blog, or e-news, etc. I am starting to see more and more “bounces” (un-opened) results from our e-newsletter when its sent out. What’s interesting is these are people who signed up to receive it. Either they don”t recognize “Gecko Gab” when it arrives in their inbox, and delete it while deleting all the spam they get daily. Some have spam prevention in place that is preventing stuff they want to receive from getting to them. Most people don’t know how to tweak their anti-spam measures and as such some e-mail they would like is blocked.

I love the web. It’s my primary news gathering source as well as just being fun. Lately though I find myself not visiting as many sites as I would like. There is just so much news and so little time. This is a concern especially to those of us who use the web for our businesses. How do you get people to notice you when everyone is vying for the customers attention. One way I know not to try is what the local car dealers do when they try to be heard. They scream, jump up and down, entice with some “super sale”, wear funny costumes, and just generally annoy. Why do they think that works anymore?

Maybe if you are going to join a social network it should be just one. Sure you might miss someone if you don’t join the “other” one, but you can’t be everywhere at once. Once you start to spread yourself too thin, (I have tried) you don’t put the effort into any of them that’s necessary for positive results. Yes , Twitter is interesting, but thank goodness I have resisted so far.

What’s this mean to the small garden center with a web presence? How do you stand out amongst all the noise out there? I don’t know. I do know that after a quick once over of the web page I head right to the “About Us” section. After all a business is not just stuff to buy but people who hopefully care about my potential business. Who owns this business? Can I talk to them before I come to the store or do business with them? Will they answer my e-mail? The more the business owner or manager interacts with the customer, both in person and on the web the better. It’s still unusual for this to occur, so it’s a great chance for a small business “to stand out.”

If you tied to e-mail me lately you might have found a message “mail box full”. I ignored, this since I had sent messages read to the trash bin. Well apparently I needed to empty the trash bin! Thanks to those who took the time to call and let me know.

I try to monitor people who have linked to me, and return the favor by linking back to them via my blogroll. Its gotten hard to keep up these days, as there are so many new blogs out there! My only criteria for linking to another web site via my blogroll is a shared mutual interest. Mostly its garden related, but it could be just about anything. If you have linked to my blog and I missed it shoot me an e-mail and I’ll be sure to link back to you. Quality links are what makes the blog world go round!

Want to thank Zoey Farms who took the time to attend our Hyper-tufa pot making workshop. It was the first time they had visited and it was a result of our web page and blog. Yea, it works. Zoe farms is one of our growing community of vegetable farmers in the area. They have been around for a few years and sell their vegetables through a subscription service. We are seeing an increase in interest in growing your own vegetables as well as selling the excess or all of it at farmers markets or through a subscription service. I found out about them because they had linked to my site mentioning they were going to visit. I try to keep my eyes open for people talking about us. I have Google alerts set up for our names, business name, etc. When I saw their link I was able to visit with them before even meeting them in person. This is what all small business needs to do. You can start a blog for nothing but the time it takes to nurture it.

We in the blog world sometimes expect things to happen over night. That’s seems to be the nature of the world today. We want it now. Some things take time though and I believe that we have only started to see the effects of all this blogging. To those that said blogging was not something business needed to think about, your wrong! It empowers not only the customer, but connects businesses to the customer as well as other business. I find talking with other garden centers around the world empowering. Its amazing how small garden centers in all different places are facing the same concerns and possibilities. I find it comforting that a garden center in England has many of the same issues we have here. It means we are not alone, and through collaboration can come to solutions that benefit us both.

I hope I am right, but the era of small personalized business may be coming back. Right when we thought that the world was going to be dominated by mega-chains that crush the little guy, the little guy gets a voice! The really neat thing is that people are starting to listen and respond. I don’t need a huge percentage of the gardening public to shop our store. What I need is a smaller, more passionate group of people that will respond to our message and spread the word. When small business will really start to reap the rewards of keeping up the conversation is when the customer starts to spread the word. And when that customer has a blog of their own, look out!

Some posts just keep on giving. My post about Hines Nurseries being de-listed at the stock exchange was written on August of 2007. I just received a comment from Texastim, who apparently works at Hines. His comment is mostly directed at other commenter’s who might have worked at Hines in the past. What I found interesting is that it took someone at Hines this long to speak up. If you Google Hines Nurseries my blog post comes up right after Hines nurseries own web site.

His comment concludes with “hines is still going strong so someone was wrong. you people that have left hines need to quit being angry and actually reasearch more than one site before talking.”

The problem is there are no other sites to research, other than business sites that just list company info. There is no Hines blog where they can explain their side of the story. I get people searching for hines nursery blog and they end up at my site.

Does Hines have to blog? No. Should they have a blog? Yes, if they want to get their side of the story out. Do they need to get their side of the story out? After all I am just one potential customer with a blog and they are a multi-million dollar company.

Welcome to the new world. Ignore just one potential customer (in this case me) and the next thing you know they are writing about your business. Try Googling Home Depot tomatoes and see what comes up. The only reason I knew my site was coming up was people have used the search, home depot tomatoes in the past and ended up here.

I appreciate Texastim taking the time to address his concerns about my post and some of the comments. Companies will have to do more of this in the future. I find this great news. It allows the customer to have a say, good and bad about their experiences. If the company has done everything they can to address the customers concerns, then they will have nothing to fear from this new media. Instead use this media to express what the company stands for beyond a corporate web page. Let’s hear from more businesses!

Whats with the tree in the picture? Its an “Arkansas Black” Apple growing in my yard. I planted it about twenty years ago. Just thought it looked cool.

Here are some pictures of the type of cold damage we experienced. The Japanese Maples, especially the fine leaf varieties look like they will have to loose all the leaves before they get new leaves. Some of the “Bloodgood” varieties seem to have escaped the severe damage. The Hydrangeas got hit but will recover. Unfortunately they we’re loaded with flower buds which are now destroyed. There goes Mother Day sales of Hydrangeas.

The last picture is of some Pieris “Forest Flame” with the new red growth burned. This is the highlight of this bush. I went through and cut off all the new growth. Hopefully most of these plants will recover.

The problem is these plants will now be sitting around right through the important spring season. By the time they recover we will be in summer. What to do? Buy in more replacement stock to sell until the others recover? Sorry, can’t do a lot of that. Already spent the money to get these plant here. Can’t just order more. I also don’t think leaving these plants in the sales area is good business. We could have a “cold snap” sale but who is going to buy damaged looking plants? This kind of damage, at this time of year will cut into sales. I hear the story in Oregon is much the same, with spotty but serious damage depending on the nurseries location.

After all the discussion about planting tomatoes too early we here in northern California have been hit with a cold snap much worse than expected. Not only were tomatoes planted too early killed our agricultural community has been hammered. We just had the most damaging late season frost in thirty years!

Vineyards have suffered anywhere from a 15 to 100% loss. Almonds, peaches, plums, and other early season crops have been decimated. Some peach farmers are saying the loss is 100%. I don’t know about nursery losses but can say we got “nailed” at the nursery.

Sure the vegetables were in the tent and escaped damage but even hardy plants that had new growth were damaged. Other than a bunch of marigolds and cosmos we had to dump most of the plants will recover. The problem is they will have to be set aside while we wait for new growth the replace the damaged growth. Even trees like crape myrtles had all the new growth damaged. Don’t even mention the hydrangeas or Japanese Maples that will take at least a month to recover.

When we came back to work Monday you could see right away that we had an event that was going to effect the spring sales season. It got down to 30º F. It’s weird walking through the nursery smelling the rotting foliage that was killed by the cold. We only have so much time to sell these plants and now they will have to be set aside while they recover. Never the less they will recover this year. The farmers that have lost their entire crop will have to wait till next year.

Your going to hear more about this cold spell as the damage is assessed and reported. A conservative estimate is the damage to grapes in Napa, Sonoma, and here in El Dorado County could reach $80 million! Thats just the grapes. Add all the peaches, plums, almonds, and other crops grown around here and the dollar loss will be HUGE.

We still have plenty of plants that we will be able to sell, so in our case the damage was bad but not devastating. Now we are staring straight into the high 70’sºF by the end of the week. We are going to be answering a lot of concerned customers questions in the next couple of weeks.

In this post we had a discussion about why we don’t sell tomatoes early, and my disappointment that the local box stores were selling all the warm season vegetables way to early. That post was March 26th. Here we are at April 19 and check out the forecast for Placerville for Sunday. Check out the overnight low. Get those frost blankets out!

Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 56. Calm wind becoming west between 6 and 9 mph.

Sunday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 32. West southwest wind 5 to 8 mph becoming east southeast.

We did finally bring in some warm season vegetables this week for sale, but we keep them in our event tent where they are protected, and we still don’t recommend planting until May. It will be interesting to see what happens to the vegetables sitting out exposed with no cover at Home Depot. Don’t fret though, if they all die Home Depot won’t pay a thing. The vendor will eat the loss. What about all those people who bought them early and planted them outside. They will dig them up, and return them for a replacement.

What a waste of time.

This is why I say it does matter where you buy your garden supplies. We work hard at our nursery to keep all the plants that we have looking great. Have we ever had to throw out or give away plants? Yes. All nurseries have at one time or another had to get rid of plants that were diseased, or just in really poor shape. We have however, never thrown away plants that were still salable just to get credit from the wholesale nurseries. You see, we have to buy the plants before we sell them. If they die because of something we did we “eat the loss”. No credit from the wholesale nurseries for the small independent nursery.

Now read Freda’s comment at my last post. She says she worked at Lowes’ so her description of what goes on is interesting. Then I found a Google alert that sent me to Garden Web and a thread on plant practices at Home Depot. It’s worth reading too. What I like is the comments from various folks in response to bestestmommy and her post.

Like many of the commenter’s to bestestmommy I agree that chain and box stores are not evil, just ruthless. Like one of the commenter’s said, its often the local manager that makes the difference in the shopping experience. Some of the commenter’s said they are tired of hearing about this issue. If you like the boxes so be it. If you don’t, don’t shop there.

My complaint stems from the view of a small independent garden center. I realize that the volume these box stores and chains do is the reason they get preferential treatment from the wholesale nurseries. I just don’t understand why the box stores get plants to sell and don’t have to pay for them until they sell them (pay at scan). Why not offer that to the independents? We take better care of the plants, and I would guess that the percentage of plants that would be “tossed” would be lower. It’s almost as if these wholesale nurseries have been working against the independents. Of course many have! We are small! Smaller loads, more deliveries, more little businesses to deal with. It’s all so much easier when its big stores taking volume.

Now we hear that Hines wants to court the independent because we account for a “strong 25% of their sales”. Not only that but it would appear that Lowes’ is in some financial difficulties, and Home Depots sales may be down due to the slow down in the economy.

We are just 40 miles from Sacramento and 12 miles from the nearest Home Depot and in the four years we have been in business here I have never seen a sales rep from Hines. Not that I would buy anything from them anyway.

Gee, what fair weather friends we have.

According to Todays Garden Center Hines’ Nurseries says, “Tom Batt, was promoted to vice president of sales and marketing last week.” Hines Nurseries has for years been one of the major suppliers of plant material to the box and chain stores. Now after a couple of tough years they have re-discovered the independent nursery. According to the article “most of Hines’ business is with home improvement chains, mass merchandisers and supermarkets, independent garden centers represent a strong 25 percent of sales with about 8,000 retailers.” We independents are “strong 25% of sales”. According to Batt, “Independents are important to us and our industry. While a lot of our volume goes to the box stores, independent garden centers are a significant piece of our business. Some of them are big movers of products.”

Batt, according to the article “brings more than 20 years of experience in the horticulture industry and was most recently national sales director, managing the Lowe’s account for Hines.” This explains why he said of independents that, “many of them are big movers of product.” I guess if your not a big mover of product then good luck. It also explains why they have suddenly found an interest in independents. Batt was responsible for the Lowes accounts at Hines, and as I understand it Lowes is having some financial problems right now so it makes since to make this move, as independents are a strong 25% of Hines sales.

We talked before how the wholesale suppliers of the box stores were going to come calling on the independents now that their biggest customers are not buying as much. I guess we are suppose to be happy that after years of neglect the big boys are sniffing around for business from the lowly independent. I don’t think they will call on us as we are not “big movers of product”. In addition, being in northern California we might have more wholesale operations to choose from than other areas. It may be easier for us to not do business with nurseries that sell to the chain stores. I wonder if the strong 25% of independents get the same “pay at scan” deal that Home Depot and the others get. It was my understanding that a wholesale nursery like Hines is not paid for its plants until the box store scans the plant at check out. If the plants don’t sell, Home Depot does not have to pay for them. Hines eats the loss. Is this still true?

My friend Angela at Garden Bliss asked some questions of me in the comment section of a recent Garden Rant on Scotts Miracle-Gro support of the GWA Garden Writers of America. She wanted to know if independents garden centers have a co-op that could buy organic fertilizers and sell them at a price that is comparable with what Home Depot sells Scotts Organic Choice Lawn Food for.

Angela’s comments concerned how she had bought a bag of Scotts Organic Choice Lawn Food at Home Depot at a price that the local independent garden center couldn’t match. Her point is that if she can buy a organic product that is produced by Scotts at a low price why not buy it? Is she suppose to ignore, what in her eyes is a quality product, just because its produced by Scotts and sold in Home Depot? Shouldn’t we be supporting this chemical company in its efforts to supply the world with its organic products, weaning them of their synthetic products. She asked if the independent nurseries had a co-op that could produce an equal or better product for the same price.

There are nursery co-ops. One of the biggest, and the one I am most familiar with is 600 member Master Nursery Garden Centers. I had been member of this organization in the past. They do offer their own brand of products as well as central billing which helps independents get a better price on its products. There is also the GCA (Garden Centers of America) which I am not as familiar with.

To put this 600 member buying power in perspective the Home Depot has 2,234 stores. Over three times the number of outlets. When The Home Depot goes to Scotts and asks for a deal do you think they get one? I would suggest that with that number of stores the discounts would be deep. Add Lowes, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and the rest, and you can see the chain stores are a big portion of the business Scotts does. Why would an independent even consider carrying Scotts products under those circumstances?

Here is how it works. If we order one pallet of planting mix (50 bags) we pay one price per bag. If I buy three pallets per load I get a better price. The discounts continue as you buy more and more pallets. I might have a delivery every two weeks during spring of maybe 10 pallets per load. During that same moment in time the 2,234 Home Depots are receiving 10 pallets or more every week at each store! You do the math. I would guess I am way underestimating the amount they receive. Scott’s offers big discounts to big buyers.

This is why most independents carry something different than Scotts products. I do know that many nurseries carry Scotts with the assumption that while they might not make as much per bag as Depot does , it beats having the customer go elsewhere to buy. Think about it, if the independent wants to sell Miracle-Gro at the same price that Depot sells it for the independent may have to price it FOR LESS than they can buy it for. Yes, its that crazy! In many cases we can’t buy it for what the box sells it for. The same for plants. My post on redwood trees and Leyland Cypress at Costco is a great example. They we’re selling the plants for less than I could buy them for. Of course the quality of the trees being sold is not the quality we would carry, but the buying public doesn’t know about that. They see big redwood trees at amazing prices. They don’t see crappy soil, forced growth with high nitrogen fertilizers, no watering while sitting in the warehouse, etc. They just see an amazing deal!

As far as nurseries lowering their prices because of bulk buying of organics, its not going to happen. It’s not so much the price of organic products thats the problem, but rather the freight charges incurred in the delivery of the product from warehouse to store. Remember that 10 pallets of material that I buy every two weeks in the spring? The freight charge to get it here is picked up by us. Either in the pricing of the product to us, or in a flat delivery fee tacked on the end. As a matter of fact it’s quite trendy these days for suppliers to tack on a surcharge during “these unusual spikes” in gas prices. They say that as soon as gas prices fall they will get rid of the surcharge. Yea, right. Freight charges are eating away at the slim profits we make. Any extra savings in bulk purchasing is eaten up by the freight charges.

There is another problem for the small independent. Where to store the pallets of material that we bought so as to get the bulk savings? A store like Home Depot will blow through those pallets in no time. The independent has to store the extra product somewhere. Meanwhile the bags start to get bleached in the sun and soon enough the extra savings that was incurred in bulk buying is lost in product that looks like its been sitting around and needs to be put on sale to get it out of the store. Still want to start that small garden center or nursery?

Angela’s argument concerning Scotts Organic Choice at Home Depot being a better deal than the more expensive alternative at the local independent only holds true if we are comparing like products. Sure Organic Choice might be a good product, but is the more expensive independent product better? I don’t know since I haven’t had a chance to compare. I think that since I have the day off, and my chores involve a visit to town I’ll check out the local Home Depot and see what’s up. I’ll report back.