Cover Story: Marrying clicks and bricks

Those who have ventured into the world of online retail will attest that launching an e-commerce site is akin to opening a new store.

Retailers must decide what they want to sell online, considering items that they can price competitively in a world of Amazon and Ebay. Someone needs to take photos of all of those products, write descriptions and determine size for shipping estimates — and that doesn’t include the time it takes to select a web host, hire staff and implement an inventory management system to help run this new segment of the business.

Many, and perhaps most independent garden center retailers, with the exception of those who have floral departments, have been wary of offering products online ever since shopping went digital, and for understandable reasons. The whole spirit of independents is that they are local businesses serving their communities. Going to a garden center is truly an experience. You can’t feel the warmth of a greenhouse on a cold, dreary day online. You can’t smell fresh lilacs on a web page. Plus, shipping live plants directly to consumers requires careful planning and spot-on logistics. And, like groceries, people still go to brick-and-mortar stores to purchase plants and gardening supplies.

But companies are figuring out ways to sell plants online. Two years ago, a whopping 78 percent of the U.S. population age 15 and above bought something online, according to an article in Business Insider. Citing comScore research, the study found that 198 million shoppers purchased a good via the internet the first few months of 2014.

Online shopping has gone mobile as well — retailers in one study indicated that 17 percent of their online sales in 2015 came from smartphones, and overall, they reported that sales from smartphones grew 53 percent from 2014 to 2015. These numbers don’t even include tablets, which accounted for 14 percent of online sales in 2015 and a jump of 32 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the State of Retailing Online 2016, conducted by Shop.org, Forrester Research Inc., Bizrate Insights and reported by the National Retail Federation.

Digital patrons span demographics; although the majority of online shoppers are men and Millennials, one in four are over the age of 55, according to Business Insider.

The point? Exploring online retailing and what might work for your business is a worthwhile endeavor. We spoke to a handful of garden centers of varying sizes and specialties, and asked them what they’ve learned since establishing online shopping. Most are new to the e-commerce game, and kindly offered to share their stories with a caveat: They don’t want to be considered experts. They may not be pros, but the lessons they’ve learned from their experiences are noteworthy.

Gift card gold

Even if you’re not interested in establishing e-commerce at your business, at least consider offering one thing: gift cards. Retailers who offer gift cards online said this was by far their most profitable category, and they are simple products to ship.

Terrie Schwartz, who co-owns the family-run Wedel’s Nursery, Florist & Garden Center in Kalamazoo, Mich., has been selling various categories and expanding to different departments online since 2011. She says gift cards and floral have by far provided the most ROI.

“This is our 70th year in business, and the whole town generally knows who we are,” Schwartz says. “A lot of people, if they want something nice for their moms as a gift, think of Wedel’s. If I had to pay just [to host the garden center] products on the website alone, I wouldn’t do it. But the gift card part and the floral part make it worthwhile.”

Rich Christakes, CEO of Alsip Home & Nursery, with two locations in Frankfort, Ill., and St. John, Ind., just launched the e-commerce portion of Alsip’s website in September 2015, and he is already seeing the boost in gift card sales, which average a few hundred dollars a day.

Picking products

Schwartz started offering birding online in 2011, and a few months later launched the digital floral division.

“There’s another business, it’s not too far from us, they do a big, big online business with birding products. And we thought, ‘Well, we can do that, too.’” she says. “We have some bird feeders that not many people carry and are not sold at big box stores, and we [tend to do well with those].”

Much of what she offers online comes down to logistics and common sense.

“I picked things that I could ship. A 25-pound bag of bird seed isn’t going to be a very smart thing to ship,” she says.

But there have been some unexpected wins and letdowns. She was sure spring bulbs would soar online, but they “flopped.” However, fairy garden items sometimes go out of stock before she can reorder them.

Alsip has seen early success with fairy gardening as well, and in late March, it was the No. 1 category online.

The store sells dozens of categories online, including home brew & hobby, grills & accessories and garden décor, and the team that uploads products to the website prioritizes what to post based on the season and what’s popular. For example, much of the focus was on Christmas and holiday in the fall to prepare for the winter season.

“Christmas ornaments, décor and artificial trees sold well, well enough to where we feel like we’re going to be able to build on it this coming Christmas 2016,” Christakes says. Included in those items was a more than $400 artificial tree with $60 shipping charge that sold in Colorado, Baltimore and Washington, which for Christakes, was one of his biggest wins. “They were sales we’ve never had before, because they were outside of our market.”

What about plants?

Online floral departments are commonplace, and mail-order plant companies have gone digital, but selling plants via the web direct to consumers is not something a majority of garden centers offer. Wedel’s soon plans to add seeds to its online inventory, but has not tried plants, other than the bulbs it sold one spring. Alsip posts its bulbs online and will soon offer plants, but the company got its feet wet in non-live goods first.

“We researched the heck out of it,” he says. “We plan to sell annuals and perennials [and launch] mid to late April. It’s just a matter of prioritizing.”

Jared Hughes, who started Groovy Plants Ranch in 2014 as a wholesale and online business offering unique and rare plants and added brick-and-mortar retail this spring, says he and his wife and business partner, Liz, experimented with ways to ship succulents safely to consumers outside of Ohio, where they are based. Because of succulents’ sensitivity to cold, the company ceases online ordering through winter and relaunches in spring.

Setting up the online store was easy, Hughes says. He went with Shopify. “It’s super user friendly, and customer service is good.” The difficult part was figuring out how to ship plants efficiently and safely and keeping track of numbers to make sure the stock numbers were up to date.

“We came up with our own [shipping] method. It’s all about picking the right boxes,” he says. “You find the box that fits your product.”

He keeps it simple, too — all plants come in a 4-inch pot and are shipped in increments of three, six or 12 plants. Those plants are fitted into a tray, which fits snug in the box, and then they add a thin strip of bamboo to each one of the plants, cut just to the right size and height of the box. Packing material/bubble wrap is added, and when you close the box, the sticks prevent the plants from flipping over. Sometimes he’ll put adhesive on the underside of the plant pot, but he says he’s had no issues with sliding or shaking.

“We like to ship succulents very dry,” he says. “We developed a system that worked for us based on our time and availability. When we get further into the season and have a season under our belt, I’d love to hire someone to handle all of the shipping.”

Because of the additional labor required to ship plants, Hughes charges a premium for online flora.

“It’s not unusual for us to charge an extra third, easy. If the plants show up healthy, quickly and not beaten up, the premium is not an issue at all,” he says. “People get burned by going to Home Depot and buying a succulent that’s been under a rack system for three weeks. And they may get a discount, but it’s not really what they wanted.”

Making connections online

Customer service can make or break an online retailer. The easier it is to reach a company with follow up questions or complaints, the better. Alsip offers live online chat managed by the full-time employee Christakes hired to oversee the e-commerce program.

“It has been a great customer service tool. I think people like that real-time interaction,” he says. “We’re not setting the world on fire yet [in terms of sales,] but we have a few orders coming in each day.”

Christakes is the only retailer we spoke to who hired additional staff, but he also sells the most products online. Alsip also has the most comprehensive, complex system — he used Epicor software to tie in his in-store inventory and POS system to the online segment, so customers can see exactly how many units of each product remains, and price changes and sales are automatically updated. It also designates how many products are at each location, so nearby customers can request in-store pickup. When the product is out, it disappears from the site, and comes back online when it’s available again.

“The in-store feature, I felt, was necessary to do [e-commerce] right. We are shipping things nationwide, but we’re also getting a lot of customers locally who are choosing in-store pickup,” he says, adding that grills are a popular pick-up item.

He uses UPS and USPS shipping software, which can calculate shipping costs automatically. All retailers we spoke to pass on shipping charges to customers.

Christakes turned to Target when developing the online shopping interface, and he is continuing to modify and improve the system, adding in new subcategories and products. Christakes started developing the system in 2014, which required updating the website.

“I felt like we needed to get into it. What do you do when you’re shopping? You’re Googling something, you research it, see pictures of it, read the description and pricing information,” he says. “It was a long time coming.”

Though he’s new to online shopping, he offered some advice for retailers who want to get on board.

“Don’t try to compete with me. I’m going to take you all down,” he says, laughing. “In all seriousness, be patient. You have to be willing to put the labor and staff investment into it. We’ve nowhere near broke even on this whole process yet, especially when you count the labor that’s going into it. You have to be willing to understand it’s like investing in a new business. It’s probably not for everybody, but I felt like we were big enough that we needed to do it and could do it.”

Hughes of Groovy Plants Ranch echoes Christakes’ sentiment.

“You have to dedicate yourself to taking the time to do it, and time is the last thing that we have available. It’s such a diametrically different way of thinking about business,” Hughes says. “It’s a whole new language to learn.”

“You have to keep up with the times,” Schwartz adds. “If you don’t grow and change, you’re going to go backwards.”

Learning that language and adapting to the changing market is important.

“We wanted to change with the times before they changed before us,” Christakes says. “We view our stores as a giant warehouse and distribution center. Our product, the longer it sits there, the more it costs us. We have millions of dollars of inventory; we need to have as many outs as possible. For local customers, we want them to be able to browse our inventory and shop us and have an idea of what we have ahead of time.”