Christmas in July

For many people, the month of December is spent roaming malls and browsing the Internet, looking for the perfect gifts for friends and family, and frantically shopping for food, crossing your fingers that you can pull off grandma’s famous stuffing recipe. So once the New Year rolls around, the holidays are typically the last thing people want to think about.

But for garden center retailers, holiday shopping doesn’t stop when the ball drops. About two weeks after Christmas, retailers flock to AmericasMart International Gift & Home Furnishings Market in Atlanta to start scoping out products for the next Christmas and holiday season. Many of the goods arrive in July, and holiday planning starts well before Labor Day.

In order to prepare for the hustle and bustle of the holidays, check out some of the anticipated trends for 2014, merchandising ideas for your store and what you can do now if you didn’t buy in January.
 

Plan and prepare

For more than 20 years, Michelle Reardon, gift and floral buyer for Breezewood Gardens & Gifts in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, has flown South to AmericasMart in January, and it’s always a whirlwind.

“You go to Atlanta and shop for seven days, and you come home, and six months later I don’t even know what I have coming,” says Reardon, who shops with Doni Kay, who owns Breezewood. “We check price, availability, ship date and see if they all line up. If it’s cute, we go for it. The product has to draw you in, the price has to be right, and it has to be unique.”

They attempt to hit every holiday floor at the popular Atlanta show and sift through items, selecting what seems new and different.

They offer a clearance sale the day after Christmas, start displaying new holiday gifts as early as July, and in August they host another storewide clearance sale to clean out their merchandise from the previous year.

“You can’t carry Christmas items over. People know – you can’t fool the customer,” Reardon says. “You have to keep it moving and keep it fresh.”
 

Trends to watch

Breezewood is located in a quaint, picturesque small town in Ohio, and several rustic parks featuring trails next to rivers and surrounded by forests are nearby. Because of the local affinity for the outdoors, nature-inspired Christmas items have always performed well, but Reardon has watched the popularity of this trend increase beyond her borders over the years.

“We’ve always done the rustic look, and that’s big,” Reardon says. “We decorate a Christmas tree with all natural items from the environment like twigs and birch bark to pull off the whole theme. We sell tons of owls, and we have branches that we light in the store and keep year round. Now I have customers who want to put them up in their house.”

Customers are also looking for American-made products and locally crafted items, Reardon says.

“Sometimes their kids go somewhere overseas, and they want to buy something from this area for them for Christmas,” she says. “We have lots of different lines that we can recommend if they’re looking for Ohio or U.S. products.”

Technology is also changing the look and feel of popular Christmas items, says Andrew Patton, vice president of leasing for holiday/floral at AmericasMart.

“One of the most exciting changes in the industry has been the continuing incorporation of technology into traditional products such as lighting. One example is LED lighting, which allows for a single product — like a Christmas tree — to have many variations,” Patton says. “Some designs offer thousands of variations on a single product, programmed by the end user.”
 

Merchandising by theme

Each Christmas, Breezewood decorates the store around a major theme that is repeated throughout the displays and trees, and the store becomes a destination for families across Northeast Ohio.

In 2013, the theme was simply travel, so the staff stacked suitcases to complement displays and showcased products depicting landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower and peppered snow globes with settings from different countries throughout the store.

“It really took off, so I think we’re expanding that again this year,” Reardon says. “We also decorate about 15 Christmas trees with different themes. We do a sports-themed tree, we’ll have a lodgey/fishing/hunting/cabin-themed tree and a travel tree that [mirrors] the theme of the store.”

Petitti Garden Center, with nine locations in Ohio, also has themed-based holiday get-ups that draw a big crowd. Five of their stores displayed home accents around popular holiday songs in 2013. “Dominick the Donkey” was the center of one of the holiday arrangements, and deer and fluffy snow draped the “Sleigh Ride” display.
 

Think local

For garden center retailers who didn’t buy in January, there are other ways to stock your store for the holidays.

Reardon suggests capitalizing on the “buy local” trend and connecting with local artists to find out if they would be interested in selling their goods in your store on a consignment basis or buying the goods outright.

“Find a mom and pop and people who haven’t made it into the [AmericasMart] market and buy a lot of their products at once,” she says. “Go to local shows and take a truck.”

Patton says retailers can also browse AmericasMart’s year-round showrooms, which may have more flexibility on delivery times.

“Many showrooms have year-round inventory with product that can ship for this upcoming season,” he says. “Retailers may have to visit more showrooms, but I am confident that they will find they are looking for.”