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Retail Ready :: Judy Sharpton
Published:4/1/2008
From Benches to Fixtures
From my first days in garden center renovation, I have maintained three objectives: ridding the industry of black plastic trash cans as consumer packaging; getting all product up off the ground; and wiping out all block and board benches. After 15 years, I can see real progress: Research has proven the selling power of printed pots and the increased turns of product within easy reach on a table.
Block and board, however, has been harder to eradicate.
After all, product on a block and board table is an improvement over on-the-ground presentation; it accomplishes the No. 1 purpose of a store by enhancing customer-merchandise contact.
Block and board benches do not, however, meet any of the marketing opportunities of the store for increasing the perceived value of the product in the eye of the customer. We know from every experience in retailing that the environment of the store sets the customer’s expectations for product quality and price. For example, consumers can buy ladies’ underwear at both Target and Victoria’s Secret. One major element in setting the customer’s differing price expectations for these two channels is the physical environment of the store. Compare your expectations at an antique store and a flea market. Professional fixtures communicate higher perceived value for all products in the store.
Professional fixtures create the opportunity for a series of store improvements over time while maintaining continuity. Whether you choose wood, metal, plastic or a wood-wire combination, using the same fixtures throughout a department unifies that department and distinguishes between others. For example, houseplants might be effectively displayed on a black plastic fixture or a painted wood fixture while annual color shows better on natural wood fixtures with endcaps for big color “slow-down” presentations. A combination of wooden endcaps with metal tables can be both economical and attractive. Just be consistent. A hodgepodge of fixtures can add to the clutter in a department and detract from product presentation.
Whatever style fixture you select, be consistent throughout each department and keep your fixtures clean and well stocked.
Beyond Annuals: Creative Plant Categories
Most garden centers know their seasonal destination products. They know customers come to the store at any given season looking for a specific product category: spring annuals, summer blooming shrubs and perennials, hanging baskets, porch or patio planters for seasonal entertaining, holiday décor from Fourth of July to Christmas, special event plantings from Derby Day in Kentucky to St. Patrick’s Day in New York or Chicago. Destination products can be used as a way to pull the customer deeper into the store and in contact with additional merchandise, or they can be used as convenience items that allow the time-starved customer easy in-and-out shopping, particularly during busy entertaining seasons.
But what about all those “other” live goods—vegetables, herbs, tropicals, succulents and houseplants? These products require specific attention to placement in the store for maximum sales. Poor placement can mean inventory doesn’t turn over fast enough. Maintaining product quality then becomes expensive and difficult.
According to the latest research from the Garden Writer’s Association and anecdotal information from many garden centers, vegetable gardening is on the rise. At the same time, customers aren't buying flats or even six packs of individual varieties as they once did. So, what’s happening? As you all know from your encounters with your customers and articles in magazines from Martha Stewart Living to Real Simple, vegetables and herbs have invaded the ornamental garden. Customers are mixing parsley and sage with petunias and salvia. Patio tomatoes laden not only with blooms but also fruit sell out faster than you can restock. Peppers add color to perennial borders.
So how can you display these products effectively? This is a classic opportunity for double inventory, i.e. displaying the same product in two different departments in the store. Because many customers arrive at your store looking for the vegetable and herb department, a well-stocked department is an effective method of presentation. If this category is a specialty for you, place the department as deep in the store as possible to maximize contact with other merchandise. At the same time, displaying yellow-blooming squash or purple-blooming eggplant with coordinated colors of annuals or perennials allows a creative mix. Remember, your customer shops by color for everything from bath to garden.
Tropicals, succulents and houseplants offer the same opportunities. While you may want to maintain conventional departments for these products, adding them to traditional exterior gardening options offers customers additional choices and offers the store additional sales. Many houseplants transplant beautifully to the shade gardening department, in containers or in the ground. Customers who don’t want to invest in a tree they will never see mature might really like using a ficus or palm (or several!) in a pot to create an outdoor shade retreat.
As the weather warms, succulents are natural additions to the sun garden where watering is expensive and time consuming.
The key to all these peripheral plant categories is to develop uses that entice a consumer who knows nothing of traditional departments and plant mixes. We can take a page from the extraordinary expanse of combinations developed by the late Kathy Pufahl during her reign at Beds and Borders. Kathy didn’t come from a traditional horticultural background. That allowed her to put together a new blend of blooming and foliage plants. We don’t have to give up the traditional categories we’ve always known to find new combinations to please our customers and increase sales.
From Merchandising to In-Store Media – Chapter 3
In our last issue, I told you that according to 2006 data from Big Research, the least desirable in-store media is sidewalk events/sales. I hope you’re thinking of that as you plan your spring product placement.
But, what’s the highest ranked in-store media event? Product sampling ranks as the highest-ranked in-store media for impacting sales. You know how that works: The grocery store offers free samples; the cosmetic counter offers free perfume samples and the music store plays the featured CD. All these efforts lead to impulse buys by consumers who came to the store without any expectation of purchasing garlic potato chips, an Estee Lauder fragrance or Madonna’s latest offering.
The impact of sampling on impulse buys makes this technique even more important in the garden center where the majority of customers arrive with little idea of what they want till they see it.
So, what’s “product sampling” in the garden center? That easy: It’s the display garden. When you see a display garden (in-ground or better still in a container) as a form of sampling, you begin to organize the presentation, not as a collection of individual plants, pots, soil amendments and decorative items but as a single product the customer can take home as a total package. That forces us out of the mold of a display garden that includes every plant we sell, all arranged in alphabetical order with an identifying tag (begins to look like a little plant graveyard) and into a collection of consumer-sized plantings in coordinated containers that the customer can purchase as a single product. Consider a single price point for the entire garden, with the option for delivery of the container or installation of the collection in the customer’s in-ground garden.
Bottom line: Create a collection of “product sample” gardens—three for shade (bright colors, pastels and foliage) and three for sun (bright colors, pastels and single color). Treat the container gardens as product samples with all the ingredients inventoried close by.
Judy Sharpton is owner of Growing Place Marketing, which specializes in garden center renovation to create a retail-ready environment. She can be reached at judy@growingplaces.com or( 770) 815-1052.