“Give him a hat and a jacket and he will buy anything”
A fertilizer salesman talking about a garden store owner in Maine
Bottles and bottles, bags and bags, all lined up, all different, but really all the same. Most garden stores fill their shelves with too many products designed for the same plant problems. They are just get in the habit of ordering this stuff from their supplier buddies year after year. The guy shows up every Tuesday morning with a box of donuts for the staff.
Half of the bottles and bags stay on the shelves summer and winter. They have been cleaned and dusted so often that the words are fading and the labels are falling off. And really, how many brands of the same kind of shovel do you really need? How many similar fertilizers are needed?
Others Buy. We Select
At green garden gates, we search for and select a limited number of products for our stores that will give the best results for the most varieties of plants for the longest period of time. We select the best tools, the best all purpose garden chemicals, and the best fertilizers and stick with them until another more superior product can replace the items. We do not want to add. We want to minimize for maximum results. Of course, there will always be a place for some new product introductions and products that are popular in one particular region, but we are careful to limit these products.
The uniformity of our stores is important. the products we offer must be familiar and similar to any customer from any another area of the country.
And we do not forget the “old standbys”. Those products and plants that have stood the test of time for gardeners.
“Remember the KillerKane? It was the best darned thing I ever bought to get rid of dandelions in my lawn. It was just a simple three feet long green plastic tube. You pulled the cap off the top, filled the tube with water and dropped this Alka Seltzer looking pill into the tube. You walked to the dandelion, pushed/stabbed down on the tube kane into the center of the dandelion and let a little of this stuff right onto the weed.
It killed them dead, boy and didn’t touch my lawn, didn’t have to bend down, didn’t have to buy a bunch of fancy high priced cans, didn’t have to mess around with a sprayer. I wore that tube out over a lot of years. Now I can’t find the thing anywhere. They look at me like I have been sipping on that little green tube!”
It killed them dead, boy and didn’t touch my lawn, didn’t have to bend down, didn’t have to buy a bunch of fancy high priced cans, didn’t have to mess around with a sprayer. I wore that tube out over a lot of years. Now I can’t find the thing anywhere. They look at me like I have been sipping on that little green tube!”
“Each season, I would plant Lemon Drop Marigolds as a border to my walkways. They were small headed bright yellow and the shortest marigolds on the market. Now I cannot find them anywhere. A seed salesman told me one time that he has them but the seed is so cheap that he does not make any money selling them to growers. He likes to sell the expensive new varieties. All the garden stores have these hot shot high priced marigolds I want my lemon drops!”
The similar uniform selection of plants for all of our stores is also important. We choose about four hundred varieties from the categories of shrubs, trees and vines that are commonly used for planting, nationally. We add another selection of landscape plants that is used successfully in that particular region. Like our hard goods products, we leave room for a limited number of new introductions. We carefully select from the best growers available for these plants. We attempt at all times to replace rather than add to our selections.
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