Welcome Changes

Jennifer Zurko

When the Ball Publishing editors sit down every year to plan our editorial calendar, we consult with our sales team to find out what they're seeing on the vendor side that’s relevant for the year. But we also look at what’s going on around the industry, asking, “What are growers/retailers talking about? What’s on their minds?” That’s how we came up with this month’s theme of the Money-Saving Issue.

But as I planned the issue and read the articles, one thing kept jumping out at me: to save—or make—money, you have to be willing to embrace change.

Take our cover story, for instance. Chris Beytes had a chance recently to sit down with Vinny Scalese, Bell Nursery’s COO, who’s relatively new to the company, starting his third year. I met Vinny a few years ago when he was still with Home Depot and heard him speak to a room full of Bell’s sales people and merchandisers, and he knows his stuff. After 22 years with The Home Depot, Vinny decided to take a chance and accept an offer from Gary Mangum and Mike McCarthy. Read more about Vinny and the changes he’s implementing at Bell.  

Something else that’s constantly changing (sometimes at a scary pace) is technology. You’re always hearing about the next big thing from Apple or seeing commercials for products like Fitbit and GoPro. And it seems like almost everyone has a drone (including us, whom we affectionately call Snoopy). And some trendwatchers are predicting that the world of robotics will blow up and we’ll have human-like robots helping us in our daily lives (think Rosie from “The Jetsons”). Although, we probably won’t be seeing anything like the “Terminator” movies, the concept isn’t farfetched. I mean, the brains behind the Roomba robot vacuum built the plant-spacing robots from Harvest Automation you saw at the last two Cultivate shows. How else is modern tech being incorporated into our industry?

If you want to save some money in your greenhouse, you may have to make some changes to processes that may have been around for years. Gary Cortès from Flow Vision discusses how you can save money and time just by looking at your shipping racks. And the Back Pocket Grower app we’ve been featuring during the last few months has a function that can help you calculate whether the crop you’re growing is really making you money.

I hope you glean at least one money-saving idea from this issue. GT