#32 TRAILBLAZES* (revised 6/10) "be small, be compact"

“Half of the retail space of this store was chucked full of useless junk.”

Twyla Maline

On her visit to a garden store in rural Ohio

Keep it small and compact

Your father and mother’s garden center worked for years. They bought a bunch of cheap farmland at the edge of their town. They threw up a couple of hoop houses, laid down some sprinkler pipe and probably used the old farmhouse as a store. They spread the whole thing out all over that land; stacks of old lumber, used cars, your rusted basketball hoop. If customers ventured two hundred feet from the garden store, they would trip over rolls of old plastic and faded rabbit chewed signs from the beginning of time.

Well, with some exceptions, it’s all over for those large expansive garden stores. That model is gone forever. First, land is too valuable to dump a bunch of junipers on it to bake in the sun. The customers has changed. They have no time to wander around those acres trying to find a Japanese maple. Spreading out means more of everything the just adds to the cost of operation, more employees to hoof around the place, more equipment to keep it up, more property taxes, more utility bills, more inventory to fill it up and keep it maintained. More, more, more.........

Oh, and one other thing, you might have dreams of grandeur, buy the extra land because you believe that everyone will want to flock around your little store like bees to honey. Chances are that will not happen, my friend. And don’t count on your little garden store paying for that ground until the big land rush comes. Those sugar plums dancing in your head will cost you more than you know.

We are committed to small, finding a size that keeps us close and tight, finding every available space and using that space to the maximum to sell our plants and plant care products.

If we can’t go out, we go up and rack it higher. If we can’t handle a full load, we schedule multiple loads. If we run out of parking, we lease or borrow or trade for a lot nearby and shuttle our customer’s cars. Yes, there are times in the spring when it gets dicey. But, those days are few. The money to buy up a bunch of that extra property for those few days is just foolish.

Our goal is to have a product at our customer's and employee's fingertips at any minute of the day, to avoid throwing away dollars for extra land we will not need.

We want to have a business that can be purchased if we ever decide to re-locate that will not break the bank, limiting future prospective buyers.

We plan for small. We design for small. We profit by being small.