Show & Tell With Soils

Jennifer Polanz

Often I write a lot of words trying to provide strategies for selling more of something— in this case, bagged soils. This time I’m going to show you through photos I’ve taken over the years of displays and strategies that caught my eye at a variety of retailers. I’ve been all over this great country and now I want to show you what others are doing. If you have a unique strategy for selling more of any given product, I’d love to hear it, too. You can email me at jpolanz@ballpublishing.com.

Private Label
Al’s Garden Center, with four locations in Oregon, offers a private label potting soil (pictured here) and organic compost, as well as a fertilizer option. They highlight in all marketing—on the bag, on the website and on in-store signage—that the blend is the same they use in their own growing operation. These photos are a couple of years old, so the packaging and verbiage has changed a bit, but it’s still the same product customers know they can trust because they see the results in the plants they buy.

Stack It High—Inside
Not everyone has the space or the ability to do this inside. However, keeping bagged soils inside can help reduce dust, dirt, wet packaging and other problems caused by the outdoor elements. At the Family Tree Nursery location in Shawnee, Kansas (southwest of Kansas City), they stack up clean bags indoors with pricing overhead, making it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for. They, too, carry their own private label premium potting mix, along with SunGro, Foxfarm, Espoma and others.

Drive-Thru Convenience
I included this one because I often hear retailers questioning others about how they have their drive-up bagged goods situated. This one is from a Stein’s Garden & Home location in Milwaukee. Customers can buy at checkout and drive through to get loaded up. Something I thought was great about this, though, is the signage with the large pricing on it, so you could see it from a distance in case you want to scope it out before going inside.

One-Stop Shopping
This one is always easier said than done, but Suburban Lawn & Garden south of Kansas City, has soils cross-merchandised with pottery that would be used in that instance—in this case for cactus plants. That same store showed customers what bagged goods looked like inside in a clever display of wheelbarrows.

On the Way In …
Flamingo Road Nursery in Davie, Florida, makes sure customers can’t miss their Master Nursery Bumper Crop soil products display on the way in to the garden center. Once there’s soil in the cart, customers are ready to shop for the plants to put in the soil and perhaps containers, too.

… And On the Way Out
If the customer gets all the way to the checkout without picking up the soil they need for that day’s planting project, Watson’s Greenhouse & Nursery in Puyallup, Washington, has them covered. They can simply look up and add on what they need to their order. GP