Ask the Experts - What’s the best management decision you’ve ever made?

Each issue, we ask successful garden center operators to tackle a question or issue pertinent to the industry. This month’s panel of experts includes Theresa Riley, owner of Rockledge Gardens in Rockledge, Fla.; Kimberly Sevilla, owner of Rose Red and Lavender in Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Sandi Hillermann McDonald, owner of Hillermann Nursery & Florist in Washington, Mo. Here they address wise management decisions that have paid dividends at their stores.

Theresa Riley: I’d like to say that the best business decision I ever made was marrying my husband Kevin! We’ve been married 32 years now and have been involved in the business together since Day 1. I seriously cannot imagine running Rockledge Gardens without him. We each have our own strengths (and weaknesses), and I think together make a pretty good team.

But the best business decision that we made together in recent years was to purchase our little Garden Bug car (a VW convertible). We’ve gotten a lot of “mileage” out of this little car as far as advertising, promotion and just excitement in general. It is also the inspiration for our Garden Bug program, our customer loyalty program. We currently have over 4,500 Rockledge Gardens Garden Bugs. It also helped us “give birth” to our Little Bugs Club. This is our children’s gardening club that is run by our daughter, Aurelia.

Kimberly Sevilla: We do workshops, generally focused on edibles, on Saturday mornings at 10. Each workshop lasts about an hour. In our [largely urban] neighborhood we have a lot of beginner gardeners, and the workshops are a great way to explain the basics of gardening. Teaching people what to do with their harvests is a natural fit. It takes advantage of the time before fall planting season and gets people excited about gardening.

Most of my customers are under 30 and are the DIY, Etsy generation and have a general mistrust of chain stores and mass marketed items. They want to support the little guy, and they want to learn how to do things themselves. This is a perfect opportunity for locally owned independents to do what they do best: offer exceptional customer service, sell unique items from smaller growers and be an active part of the community. It is also the perfect opportunity to teach people how to garden year-round and not just in the spring and to change the nature of our business into a lifestyle business that will take food from lawn to table.

Sandi McDonald: This is a tough question, but I feel one of the smartest moves I have ever made was joining the Garden Center Group (www.thegardencentergroup.com) for the expert consultations and the great networking opportunities. The sharing of that group is fantastic.

Also, a couple of years ago, we decided to increase our end-cap displays and cross merchandising in many new areas of our store. [We developed] a tie-in series of products for the cashiers to use. These displays are changed frequently to help the customer solve plant issues. We also increased in-store signage to be better “silent salesmen” throughout the complex. Not letting displays get stale and keeping them fresh was a great improvement, I think.