Peak spring season is the ideal time to look at product quality. Obviously having top-notch plant material is vitally important for all garden centers, at least that’s what you say. But when push comes to shove, it’s easy to let things slip while you put out staff fires and scramble to complete the “to do” list, all while waiting on the crazy hosta “collector” threatening to steal your morning.
Working for a breeding and distribution company allows me to visit dozens (hundreds?) of North American retail garden centers each year, and I have to say the only thing that stays consistent across all stores is inconsistency. With your wide range of products and often segregated departments for each, there’s a tremendous lack of a unified look, even within the smallest garden centers. And quality ranges just as much.
A lot of times, quality is determined by plant maintenance at retail and on an even more basic level, by the hand holding the water wand. How much time do you spend training the folks responsible for maintaining your plants (and ultimately your image)? Now that the weather is heating up, plants can dry out almost as fast as you get them watered. Yet nothing is as important as maintaining plant quality and driving demand to move plants out the door. Make this your top priority and you’ll no doubt see almost immediate results.
Visiting retail garden centers this weekend, I saw product quality ranging from spectacular to downright terrible – often within the same store (and in some cases, within a department!) It won’t surprise you that customer traffic was heaviest near the best-looking plants and lowest near the parched ones. The days are gone when shoppers by half-dead plants at a discount as some sort of rescue mission. One idea is to assign a “quality control manager” each day. Their duties could include surveillance of plant material, changing out shopped-over displays and spot watering as needed – from the minute you open until the last gate is closed and locked down.
This post may seem basic, but this time of year it’s a good reminder to spend extra attention making sure your plants look their best and stay looking their best through regular maintenance and of course, plenty of water.
