It’s going to be a green Christmas

Petitti Garden Center, number 3 on our Top 50 Independent Garden Centers list with $45 million in sales in 2012, knows how to deck the halls during the holiday season. Five of the nine Petitti stores create elaborate holiday wonderlands that attract thousands of area customers, many of whom make it a yearly tradition to see the displays.

Each year, a different overall theme is chosen for the displays; this year it was holiday songs. Once the theme is set, the home accents team and store manager work together to develop the concept for the individual displays. The displays vary slightly from store to store, as they have similar merchandise, but each team creates a “different presentation or interpretation of that theme,” according to AJ Petitti, vice president of operations. Each store’s unique “personality” shines through with the inclusion of additional props, such as a talking tree or large stuffed dinosaurs and other creatures.

The Avon location boasts an animated, interactive tree that was originally a part of the Higbee’s department store Christmas display in downtown Cleveland that was featured in the movie “A Christmas Story.” They’ve named her Roberta, or “Bertie” for short, and an employee interacts with the children through Bertie as they wait their turn to see Santa. The employee sits in a booth at the other side of the room and has a camera and headset to sing and talk with them.

When we spoke with Petitti, he reported that so far, the Christmas season has been great for the garden centers. “Our sales [in the holiday category] are through the roof,” Petitti says. “We’re having a strong season so far —up 40 percent for the month [of November]. I’ll take it!”

These displays wouldn’t be what they are without a great team of employees to put them together. Petitti employees are passionate about their jobs, as was obvious from chatting with the employees at the Avon location and seeing their display handiwork. They also tend to stay at Petitti for longer than most in the retail world. Petitti attributes this to a few factors. “It’s [partly] the overall culture and the really good people [we’ve got] in place everywhere,” Petitti says. “Great people want to work with great people.”
 

Visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gardencentermagazine to see more photos of Petitti’s holiday displays.

Photos By Karen E. Varga