Summertime blues ... and greens and ...

Frank Benzing
CEO, SummerWinds Garden Centers

The challenge: Summer can be a downer at a garden center, especially if you’ve had any kind of success during the spring selling season. One of our bigger challenges we face each year is sustaining momentum once the spring rush is over. Do you have any advice on how we can boost sales during the summer? -- Kansas retailer

Frank says:

The SummerWinds Garden Centers stores face a unique challenge in that the stores are located in three states and serve distinct sets of customers. From the headquarters in Boise, Idaho, SummerWinds operates retail nurseries in the Silicon Valley of California (six stores), in Phoenix, Ariz. (three stores), and in St. Louis, Mo. (two stores).

During the summer, we tend to market container gardening, outdoor pottery and, of course, regional and water-friendly plants. We also step-up our marketing efforts for our Gardener’s Rewards program and hold our “Ladies Night” extravaganza to encourage fall gardening, to preview next year’s bare-root fruit tree varieties and to enhance customer affinity towards our stores.

Meeting challenges. In early 2009, we augmented our marketing and training efforts in our stores and over the Web. In early spring of 2008, we placed a renewed emphasis on customer intimacy, conserving cash, SKU management (i.e., we “went on a diet”) and retail pricing strategies with a goal of preserving our margins -- while offering more in-store values to our customers. I am proud of the way our team rose to the challenge, but this economy has more challenges in store for the retail sector.

Any time, but certainly in summer, you’re looking for “hot” products that will entice customers to come to the store. Beyond the obvious “edible garden” products such as organic veggies and heirloom tomatoes, on the garden accessory side, we believe that the Earth Box and higher-quality/higher-priced tomato cages have been a hit with our customers. Had there been the supply, the Topsy-Turvy would have been a hit, as well.

Meeting of the minds. We use the summer to reflect on the first half of our year and to develop plans for the ensuing year. We also use this time to pull together all of our managers from San Jose, Phoenix and St. Louis for our annual management meeting to “sharpen the saw” on effective communication and merchandising techniques, to recognize our people and generally to share “best practices.”

What we’ve learned from talking with others in the industry is that the retail nursery business is fairly tough in the summer. I, too, am curious how other retailers keep at least a part of that springtime gardening enthusiasm at the forefront of the customer’s mind.