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In this section, we talk about our categories of plants, plant care products and garden accessories; what we sell, how we sell it, and where we sell it in our store.
Our superior service, our buildings, our shopping convenience and our employees mean absolutely nothing to our customers until they drive away, season after season with our products, satisfied that they have made their choice based on;
The highest quality
A wide and deep selection
An acceptable price
We keep our products selection simple, uniform and uncluttered
We try to find the right sizes and varieties of products that appeal to the largest number of our customers. We avoid duplication and marginal products. However, because our goal is to serve the needs of the gardener, we will have some unusual slow moving products not found in other stores.
We buy locally if possible
Our first effort to secure these products is to reach into our local markets. We want to support our local communities and sustain the success of these growers and producers.
We make our products as convenient as possible to purchase by our customers
We sell our products striking a balance between the quality of the product and the convenience of choosing that product. For example, we do not sell dried up strawberry plants in little packages, although that method is the most convenient to purchase. We sell well watered and healthy strawberries plants not so convenient in bare root bundles healed into soil
We price our products somewhere in the middle
We are never the cheapest. We price our products somewhere between the large category killer stores and our local garden store competitors.
The Categories
On the chart to the right are the general categories we use at green garden gates and some of the specific items in those categories. We continually track our percentage of each category to our total gross sales; weekly, monthly and at year end for evaluation and forecasting. We work to hold this percentages to our acceptable range. 
Inventory Analysis
The presented charts give a rough example of the analysis we use in green garden gates for our inventory purchases, ongoing forecasting, and new products or service introductions we may anticipate for the stores.
a-i lists the categories that we currently offer in our stores. J. gives an analysis of the profitability of placing a private potting soil production and sales category in our stores. % of sales lists each percentage of the products and plants compared to the overall sales.
The columns in blue analyze a cost purchase of 60% and a profit of 40-45% of the cost of each item. Row #60 has a traditionally larger profit margin and is analyzed separately. The additional profit columns explain the increase in profits if the item was marked up to that percentage. (Our company policy is to build the expense budget approximately based on the blue columns. However, we mark the product in the range average of 55%. We do this to avoid pushing expenses into the anticipated sales and leaving a possible shortfall in profits due to unexpected circumstances.)
These projections are based on total sales of about 1.1 million dollars. In rows 74 and 81, we project the model if sales were reduced to 750,000.00 and 500,000.00 annually. #68, 76, and 83 provides for a carryover seasonally of inventory cost at 10% of the total sales. #69, 77, and #84 anticipates a loss of plants and products seasonally of 2% of the inventory cost due to theft, damage or death.
When do these products sell during the year?
Rows 95-99 give the percentages of when products are sold in a typical garden store in the more southern warmer climates of the United States. Sales start to increase exponentially beginning on March 1st and continue to about the 4th of July. About 70% of sales are gathered in these 18 weeks. The months of July and August are dismal for sales because, among other factors, it is very hot in this geographical location. There is another spike in sales, 10 weeks, from September 1 through November 15th, about 20% of total sales.
What do you do during the slow times at green garden gates?
It is easy to see why we, at green garden gates have made some critical decisions in operations that take advantage of these selling times. From November 15th to March 1st, garden stores in this region gather only 3.7% of their total sales. With the expenses to run the operations in this period, it is generally a miniscule among of profit, a wash, or even a loss. The months of July and August bring in a little over 6% of the profits, not a lot but worth the effort in some expenses and staffing.
Our decision, then, is to close the operations on November 15th and re-open the business on March 1st of each year. We also will reduce drastically to skeleton staffs and expenses during July and August and ramp up again for the spike in sales on September 1st. With this decision, we hope to capture 90% of our total sales and dismiss the remaining 10%.
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The Edibles
Small Fruits
We start with some plants that just get no respect in most garden stores, the small fruits; canes and cuttings and roots.
The offering of small fruits by retail stores, in quality and variety, has gotten absolutely awful in the past fifteen years. To most they are just a bother, yielding very small profit dollars and a pain to maintain, display, and handle.
This group of plants is not always about profits. Gardeners, who once find our great selection, will never go anywhere else. This small fruit category assures us that the gardeners will be at our doors every season. Seems silly doesn’t it, driving our of the way just to pick up a good strawberry plant. Believe us, it happens. They are just tired of those dried up puny plants they see everywhere. They are pissed when their garden store shamefully sells this stuff.
What do we sell and how do we display small fruits?
Size of the plants really matters with small fruits. We offer two year canes and plants only. One year old canes are sick looking. We purchase most of this category in bare root and sell three quarters of our supply bareroot, potting one quarter up for later spring and summer sales.We also buy in pre-potted material for the convenience shopper.
Watch your gardener customers squeal with glee as they see those big husky canes with huge roots come out of the healing bins. They almost pee their pants! It’s like they have finally found the mother lode! And since there is little cost to this bareroot selling, the price is damned cheap. They run to the checkout counters thinking we have made some awful pricing error!
These are the categories of our small fruits depending on our store planting zones and ability to grow and successfully produce.
Red raspberries
2 year old canes, everbearing and single crops, 8 most popular varieties, healed in bins bareroot, 5 in a bundle and potted in 3 gallon cans, 3 to a can.
Golden raspberries
2 year old canes, 2 most popular varieties, healed in bins bareroot, 5 in a bundle and potted in 3 gallon cans, 3 to a can.
Black raspberries (blackcaps)
2 year old canes, 2 most popular varieties, healed in bins bareroot, 3 in a bundle and potted in 3 gallon cans, 3 to a can.
Blackberries
2 year old canes, 3 most popular varieties, healed in bins bareroot, 3 in a bundle and potted in 3 gallon cans, 3 to a can.
Currents
2 year old canes, 2 most popular varieties, potted in 2 gallon cans, 2 to a can.
Kiwi Plants
2 year old plants, 2 varieties, potted in 2 gallon cans, one to a can.
Gooseberries
2 year old canes, 2 most popular varieties, potted in 1 gallon cans, 1 to a can.
Table Grapes
2 year old canes, 10 most popular varieties, healed in bins bareroot, 3 in a bundle and potted in 1 gallon cans, 1 to a can.
Wine Grapes
2 year old canes, 5 most popular varieties, healed in bins bareroot, 3 in a bundle and potted in 1 gallon cans, 1 to a can.
Blueberries (low bush and high bush)
2 year old canes, 8 most popular varieties, healed in bins bareroot, 3 in a bundle and potted in 3 gallon cans, 1 to a can.
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It’s not the bang..... It’s merely the sizzle.
This selection of small fruits just arrived in a home store for their 2010 gardening season. Cute packaging right? Look a little closer at what the gardener is getting; two pathetic tiny feeble blueberry plants for ten bucks.
The blueberries probably cost the supplier two bits each. The gardener gets fifty cents worth of blueberries for the bang and 9.50 for the packaging, the cuteness, the sizzle. This is what it has come to in gardening
Well, here we are, three weeks later and this store has figured out that their gardening customers are really not that stupid! 
Now you can get the little package of 2 bucks each. Still is not worth it.
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Cranberries
2 year old canes, 2 most popular varieties, potted in 2 gallon cans, 1 to a can.
Elderberries
2 year old canes, 2 most popular varieties, potted in 2 gallon cans, 1 to a can.
Lingonberries
2 year old canes, 1 variety, potted in 1 gallon cans, 1 to a can.
Loganberries
Elderberries
Tayberries
Huckleberries
2 year old plants, one variety, potted in 1 gallon cans, 1 to a can.
Strawberries (everbearing and single crop day neutral)
6 varieties, healed in bins and sold to sell out in bundles of 25 bareroot, others sold later in paks of 3
How do we display and sell these edibles bareroot?
We use large plastic apple box bins. We line the inside of the bins with plastic, punching holes in the bottom for drainage. We prepare a light soil mix of tree potting soil mixed half and half with sawdust (either fresh or rotted, doesn’t matter) and fill the bins. 
We gather the canes in bundles using electrical wire ties, price and plant the bundles in rows in the bins. At purchase, we gently pull out the bundles, put them in a plastic bag, add some of the healing in soil and send them to the checkouts and turn to help another customer. It is as simple as that.
Where are they displayed?
We find a location that gets very high traffic. In our store, we locate these healing in bins together with cans of small fruits in our Patio and Market Garden areas. We prepare the bins in our processing area and pallet jack the completed displays into the patio building. We position an employee near the displays at all times during this selling season to answer questions, pull and bag.
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Other Edibles
seeds, crowns, cuttings, roots and divisions
Another red headed step child of the garden store business are the small plants, seeds, crowns, roots, crowns, cuttings and divisions that produce fruit and vegetables for the home gardener. They have become a real bother to the garden store retailer.
The big boxes started for force the producers to put many of this nuisance stuff in little boxes and bags and hang them on the pegboard. What the gardener gets now is a pretty picture and a mummified piece of dried up nothing.
We believe that our gardeners deserve much more, a real fighting a chance at success with these products. That does not happen with a little bone dry bag.
We believe that the resurgence of home grown fruits and vegetables is coming again to
For many of these products, we have sought out local growers near our stores. To achieve a uniform and consistent quality of our cane plants and strawberries and other products in all of our outlets, we use one of the finest growers in the
weeksberry.com
What are these varieties and how are they displayed?
Seed potatoes
5 varieties, red and white potatoes, sold by the pound
displayed uncovered in large plastic nursery pots, open for individual selection
You gotta be able to cool down those potatoes during the time that you have them in the store. If you don’t, they soon turn into pathetic mushy goo with sprouts growing in all directions, totally projecting the image to the customer that you are certainly not a gardener and more like a dummy.
We have constructed a small insulated refrigerated cooling room for the potatoes and onion sets. It is located in our receiving room and measures twelve feet by twelve feet by ten feet high. It has a larger door to get a fork lifted full pallet into the room to avoid heavy lifts in stacking. When the potatoes have been sold, the cooling unit is turned off and the area is used for storage.
There is not way to make the money back constructing this cooling room by selling seed potatoes. It is a financial sacrifice we are making for our gardeners.
Onion set bulbs
Red, white and yellow varieties, sold by the pound or the plant.
Displayed uncovered and dry in large plastic nursery pots, open for individual selection
Onion plants
Egyptian onions, wild onions, French shallots walking onions Texas Sweets and/or Walla Walla Sweets depending on geography of our stores, sold by the bundles of plants
The bareroot onion plants are displayed in mass in a large plastic pot and covered with a layer of moist peat moss. Others that are already potted are displayed nearby.
Bareroot onion plants that have been pulled in the thinning process in onion fields are difficult and sometimes impossible to keep fresh looking. The best method is to heal them in potting soil or sawdust and continue to trim off the dry tops during the display time. The bulbs of these plants are quite forgiving and will send up a new onion shoot no matter how awful the plant looks
Asparagus Crowns/ Roots
Mary Washington, Jersey Knight, Purple Passion and newer varieties
Displayed for sale in layered groups in a large plastic pot covered covering each layer with a thin amount of moist peat moss. Available to sell individually.
To keep asparagus crowns/roots from looking like dead and petrified sticks, start with a layer of peat moss at the bottom of the pot, add a course of crowns spread out, apply another thin layer of peat moss. Continue building the layers. The crowns will stay fresh and pliable all during the selling season.
Horseradish cuttings
Several Varieties
Displayed in a shallow plastic pot and covered in a thin layer or moist amended soil, sold individually.
Lay the horseradish cuttings horizontally in a bed of potting soil and peat moss in a pot and cover lightly with a layer of potting soil or peat moss.
Rhubarb divisions
Several varieties
Planted in a shallow pot with moist amended soil, priced and sold individually
Plant the rhubarb half way into the potting soil with the buds exposed allowing the leaves to start forming.
Garlic
Elephant garlic and wild garlic
The bulbs are displayed as dry bulbs are in a small container ready for individual selection. The wild garlic plants are in individual pots near the display. Each sold individually
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Vegetable (and flower) seeds
Another product that always wins and hearts and minds of gardeners is a complete selection of garden seed packets.
Garden seed packet sales have taken a big hit in
Because of this reduction in demand, seed companies have drastically limited the varieties of seeds. Gone are the once staples of vegetable gardening like turnips and rutabagas. No one has heard of these vegetables in
Recently, because of the economic crisis of Americans, vegetable seeds have become hugely popular again. Seed companies have had several record years and the retail owners have ramped up for those sales. However, just as fast as seed popularity spikes, it will most likely fall. The little spinner racks will return again.
At green garden gates, we want to always present to our customers a wide and deep selection of garden seeds. We have partnered with two major seed companies, Burpee and Ferry-Morse to custom supply the depth of our offering. We seek out a regional seed company for a display, as well as a nationally known organic seed line. We then acquire from a number of sources, the hard to find old fashion seeds not seen for years but valuable for our gardeners.
How do you display the seeds?
We have created and built our own seed racks, attractive wooden and plastic wall units. We want our seed selection to have the appeal of a library. We have devoted twenty five feet of well lighted and convenient wall space for the selection. The seed racks are designed for plenty of point of purchase space, descriptions, brochures, etc, with ample areas for seed starting products on the wall units and below the display. The racks are designed to hold the standard packet as well as a wide selection of “bulk packets”. They are easily movable and relocated to other parts of the store as the season progresses.
We:
Alphabetize the seeds in two sections; vegetable and flower. We do have special sections on the racks for organics and our regional seed supplier.
Do not duplicate seed varieties from several brands.
Look for the best value for each variety from the seed suppliers
Make certain that the seed lane is free of obstructions, with no free standing seed displays
How do you purchase this inventory of seeds?
We purchase the seeds outright and negotiate a very large discount for paying cash. We do receive an extended dating for the purchase until August of each season. Putting our money on the line gives us incentive to get the packets sold and out the door.
Do you have promotions for seed packets?
Yes, at each season opening, we kick off with a huge price reduction in our newly arrived seeds, 40% off the marked price. The seed sale lasts thirty days to as much as forty days. The discount is graduated, however. The first three weeks is 40% followed by 30% and then at the end days of the sale, 20% off the retail mark. We couple this sale with attractive reductions on seed starting supplies. All of this works very well
Where is the seed packet display located?
We position the display in the patio area of the store (and a selection in our Market Garden area of the store) near the bins and display pots of the small fruits and other edibles. An employee can then advise the customer about all of these products.
Shopping for garden seeds is a quiet thoughtful process for gardeners. We want our packet seed display to be located in a quiet atmosphere away from a lot of traffic.
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