4/28/2015
Year-Round Traffic & Cash Flow
Bill McCurry
When your last frost can be Mother’s Day, you need more than green goods to keep your cash flowing year-round. Julie Hoffmann (East River Nursery, Huron, South Dakota) has diversified her product offerings to an eclectic collection of impulse items to tempt the most discriminating buyers. She’s enjoying double- and triple-digit-percentage sales increases in the baby and children’s sections, as well as fashion, outdoor furniture and gourmet foods.
It takes discipline and hard work to continually offer new products for the upscale shopper. Julie attends garden center shows. Her gift lines are primarily acquired by attending either the Dallas or Atlanta gift shows.
Julie and husband Del Hoffmann officially started East River Nursery in 1984 with an uninsulated building and an outhouse out back. Today, in peak season, they’ll have 15 to 20 employees. Their business is almost equally split with one-third in landscaping, one-third in garden center and one-third in gift-merchandise sales.
You can’t talk with Julie and not hear her singing the praises of Home and Garden Showplace, the buying group aligned with True Value Company. Accessing product at a reasonable cost with minimal hassles is a critical aspect of stocking a variety of product lines. Julie believes her buying group’s support not only gets her more margin because of lower costs, it opens doors that a lone small operator can’t always navigate.
“I tell the customer our home décor items are one-of-a-kind in our store. If they come back it might not be here and it’s unlikely we will reorder it.” Julie’s enthusiasm and passion are evident in her voice. She focuses on providing her customers with as unique a product for their home as possible.
Julie has a fair number of out-of-town shoppers. When family or friends come to visit Huron, they’re often brought to East River Nursery to shop the one-of-a-kind products from lamps to gourmet foods to children’s toys and clothes along with green goods, of course.
“We have a small store, so we must display high. Some of our products are 15 feet above the floor. We sell the Eangee product line. These are eco-friendly, fair-trade lamps from Southeast Asia. We have $500 lamps on display. We don’t sell many, but those prominently displayed larger lamps provide traction for the $60 to $100 lamps.
Julie found more expensive items attracted more higher-dollar customers. Using the Home and Garden Showplace catalog she does a brisk business of special ordering for store pickup. She keeps enough inventory that the customers know what’s available. If a customer wants a different size or color, out comes the catalog and delivery is usually within the week.
When you’re a garden center with a limited growing season, additional products and services can provide year-round cash flow. For Julie, winter and Christmas are peak positive cash flow times. How are these seasons working for you? Could you take a page from Julie and Del Hoffmann’s book and keep your customers coming back in cold and snow to buy from you at times of the year when green products aren’t even at the bottom of their list? It’s back to thinking outside the box. Overlook the obvious and strike out in a new direction. Make a plan to fill your customers’ needs during your otherwise slower seasons.
Think you’ll be ready for a break by mid-July?
Meet and hear Bill McCurry and make new industry friends at the Down to Earth Summer Conference & Trade Show, sponsored by the Massachusetts Flower Growers’ and the Massachusetts Nursery and Landscape Associations in Topsfield, Massachusetts. Educational sessions, trade show, equipment rodeo and demos, local microbrew and a New England clam & lobster bake—all in one place for fun, education and relaxation. Check out http://tinyurl.com/ohtt7ln. GP
Bill would love to hear from you with questions, comments or ideas for future columns. Please contact him at wmccurry@mccurryassoc.com or (609) 688-1169.