Soak up the savings

Chris Dambly has long been familiar with Hydretain, which he says is a water-savings game changer for the market. Years ago, the buyer at Dambly’s Garden Center sold the product to garden centers and growers, but when he returned to his family’s garden center in Berlin, New Jersey, he knew he had to stock it.

“It just blew me away with the water-saving capabilities that it provided, as well as the ability for longer, easier maintenance. With a polymer, you have to disturb the soil. With Hydretain, you can just top dress or you can soak the basket or the root ball. And it just makes life here so much easier or for the retailers,” he says.

Hydretain is a blend of hygroscopic humectant compounds that attract and condense water molecules. It has various applications in the yard, ranging from hanging baskets to lawns and gardens.

“People don’t readily look at the bottle and know what it is for, but with a simple conversation it’s a really easy sell,” Dambly says.

The product is sold in liquid and granular forms, but Arborjet | Ecologel’s sales team provided Dambly with a dehydrated sample, so he can provide an interactive demonstration for his customers. The sample vial contains a simple, granulated white powder, so it’s easy to grab for a quick show-and-tell.

“When I tell other store owners to bring in the product, I make sure that they have a sample of the active ingredient,” he says. “You literally tap it out on your hand, and it pulls water out of the air in front of the people. When you show people how that active ingredient works, it’s an extremely easy sale.”

He also says the product is versatile, noting that it’s easy for home gardeners to use and gives them more time back in their day because they don’t need to water as much.

“For the average customer or homeowner who’s got kids and jobs and everything else that goes along with running a household, to have one less thing to have to take care of, it makes them so extremely happy,” he says. “Plus, it’s able to bring the energy and the vitality of the plant during the drought season, which is worth every penny to customers that end up buying it.”

Additionally, he says there’s the two-fold benefit of selling it with two different customers in mind. The first is selling Hydretain at the basic price point for homeowners. The second way to sell it is if a garden center has a landscape division.

“If you have a large landscaping following with multiple accounts, then it may be worth your time to offer them a small discount — small — so that they can upcharge for it and work it into their own customer sales,” he says. “They’re going to reach customers that you are not with your main location, so any chance that you have that word of mouth is excellent.”