Profiles in power: Smooth out the seasonality

Q: It has been a tough few years for many businesses, and you mentioned that you’re one of the only garden centers left in the area — what do you think accounts for that, and what makes you different?

A: I think very, very careful financial management is really, in the end, what probably kept us going. When we decide what product we’re going to sell, we look at more than just, “Is that a product that we want to sell?” We look at how it’s going to fit in the store. Every garden center is going to have seed. But we have about 12 seed companies that we sell, including one we branded called Deep Rooted.

We have thousands and thousands of varieties of seeds. Now that doesn’t mean that we want to be all things to all people, so there’s a lot of product that we rule out completely, because we want to be all in for seed. Another great example is our herb program. We have about 350 varieties of herbs.
 

Q: So when picking a category, you ensure you specialize in it?

A: Yes. I did plenty of dabbling over the years—and then I [adopted] the philosophy where either you’re in or you’re out, and decided it must reflect who you want to be and what you want your business to be. Then you get down to the merchandising, and I think that’s probably the other thing that sets us apart. When we set up our displays, we always say we’re going for the win.
 

Q: How do you make your displays special?

A: I don’t have any shelving units found in a typical garden center, where the shelves hook into the metal pieces. Those are completely gone. We have wood shelves that we’ve built that take the products and merchandising to the next level, and we eliminated all of what I would call “old garden center looking stuff.” Lattice is not allowed, because lattice looks like what we were doing in the ’80s. Concrete blocks, cinder blocks — those are not allowed. That’s how we’ve kept the store updated. A lot of that is looking outside of the industry for what other stores are doing, like Anthropologie. Through the recession, there were projects we weren’t able to do. There was basically no growth, but I always try to make it look like we’re doing well. What customers saw looked good, like we were growing and making it.
 

Q: How has business been in the past few years?

A: We would qualify 2013 as a good year, but not stellar. We hit at about $4.6 million, which includes wholesale distribution, a landscape department, retail, but not the café.

We’re seeing a real nice surge, if weather is decent, in November. For 2012, November was our fourth biggest month of the year. For 2013, November ranks right up there in the top six months. We’re trying to build that trend, and that helps take the seasonality out of the business a little bit.

Any time you can find those products that are on the perimeter and pull customers into the garden center and get people thinking of you as more than just this garden center that I go to buy my fertilizer and my plants from in the spring is a good thing. When you really start leveling out that selection, and having products that are beautiful for the home — terrariums are a great example — then you’re putting yourself in a different league.
 

Q: One of the aspects of your business that helps level out the seasonality is your café. Can you tell me a little bit about why you entered the restaurant business?

A: The idea behind Sage Garden Café is that we want our customers to have lunch and then shop at the garden center and nursery in one big swipe, and it’s been very successful. We’re primarily a lunch business, but a portion of our business is breakfast, and then we do special dinners at least once a month.

We have a campus layout on 20 acres, and the building was used for landscaping offices, and we weren’t generating revenue from office space. I started looking into some different things — I considered a florist shop, I considered selling produce. The restaurant just kept coming to the top of the list because people eat every single day, so it basically became, “How can I get people to come and pull into my parking lot every day?” And it’s with food. We’re into our third year. It’s totally different than running a nursery, obviously, but it’s good. We were really surprised, from day one, how busy we were. We had originally intended to be more of a deli style restaurant but that didn’t play out. So it’s a full service sit down restaurant with servers.
 

Q: What kind of special dinners do you offer?

A: For Valentine’s Day, we pair dinner and a dozen roses. We book our dinners every time — it’s by reservation only. And the menu changes regularly, probably about every six to eight weeks, depending on the seasonality of the produce.
 

Q: Do you have the same people working in the garden center and in the restaurant?

A: My chef at the restaurant never works at the garden center, but the more people who play a role in Wilson Nurseries and Sage, the more they are engaged in where they work and the concept of the whole thing and how the garden center and restaurant fit together. There are probably five to 10 people who we train to do both.
 

Q: Starting a restaurant can be risky. Why do you think it has been so successful?

A: We’re offering something different in a town that is primarily bar and grill type chains. And the environment is amazing. It’s garden themed in a very classy way. It has a great atmosphere, and I hear that over and over again from our customers.
 

Q: I also noticed another unique service you offer —hosting weddings.

A: We’ve been hosting weddings for six years, and the way that we can make it profitable is by doing all of it. So Sage does the catering, so it’s not an option to have another caterer come in. Now we’re not in the cake-making business, and don’t want to be. We do all of the flowers. We do have a minimum dollar amount of $700 on doing flowers for a wedding, because I learned that one the hard way. We do the flowers exclusively, meaning the centerpieces on the tables as well as the bridal party flowers — all the bouquets, all the boutonnieres, everything.
 

Q: Where do the weddings take place on the property?

A: We have three possibilities of large spaces, two outdoor retail spaces that we clear out with an option to have a tent, and the greenhouse, but we try to avoid that. We have our own tables and chairs, but those are part of the rental price, so they get the whole package. It’s a lot of work, but, from a dollars perspective, it’s worth it when you get the whole package. I would never want to imply to anyone it was the most profitable thing we do, but it’s successful for several reasons. It’s a morale booster for employees and a creative challenge. It works for us because we have the restaurant and do the catering, including alcohol, and because we have a creative team that is talented at floral design. It shows people that we can do the floral, that we’re not just a garden center — we’re designers, and we can create amazing venues.

Send your Profiles suggestions to msimakis@gie.net.