Monrovia to debut ecommerce website in January

Monrovia Nursery is launching an ecommerce website by mid-January 2014, and consumers will be able to buy plants directly from the company. But Monrovia won’t ship the purchased plants to gardeners’ homes. Instead, the California-based nursery will deliver the plants to participating independent garden centers, which will then distribute them to customers.

These sales will carry a retail markup for IGCs.

David Kirby, vice president of sales at Monrovia, says the idea came about for a few reasons.

“We have a department established that assists those consumers in finding plants in the marketplace in their regional market, and oftentimes we find that the plants they are looking for just aren’t available in their area or they have a difficult time securing orders in their garden center,” Kirby says. “Some expressed frustration with finding plants and had a desire to buy directly from Monrovia.”

Monrovia is redesigning its website as well, so adding an ecommerce portion now made sense. But they aren’t acting independently of their IGC customers.

“Some other national plant brands sell direct to consumers and they do deliver to homes, and that’s not at all what we intend to do and not how this program was established,” Kirby says. “We know that success in gardening occurs locally, and that knowledge is really with the local independent garden centers.”

Monrovia works with 2,000 independent garden centers, and they have the option to participate in the program. The plants will be delivered directly to the stores, and the garden centers will receive a retail markup from the sale, Kirby says. Once consumers purchase the plants, they’ll receive a message indicating that Monrovia will ship them to the local IGC once they have finished growing and are in “prime condition,” Kirby says. The plants will be delivered between March and May, have a label with the gardener’s name, a thank you tag and a fresh, clean container.

“There’s been a question about the retail price of the plant, and we will have an appropriate retail price,” he says. “The intent is to not be cheaper than our garden centers.”

Kirby says that consumers who participate in the program and buy online will be entered into Monrovia’s “Plant Savvy” club, the name of the monthly online newsletter which has 30,000 to 40,000 subscribers. They’ll be able to purchase plants based on Monrovia’s current availability of unsold product, so the plants offered will change.

“There’s a concern that we’ll be selling plants that our garden centers have pre-booked or committed to, but that’s inaccurate,” Kirby says.

Monrovia will offer garden centers in-store marketing materials and push information out on its social media pages and enewsletter to spread word about ecommerce offer, Kirby says.

“We’ll be able to communicate and have a deeper relationship with these consumers,” he says. “We’ll have the history of what they purchased, ask them for photos and updates on how their plants are doing in the garden.”

If the program goes well, Monrovia will extend it through the summer, and the west coast will have an opportunity to offer plants year round, he says.

Kirby says the program will benefit independent garden centers because people who purchase plants online now usually don’t shop at their local IGC.

“[Some consumers] like to buy plants online, and they buy roses and they buy 1-800-Flowers and try perennials and starter plants that are found online,” he says. “So we see this as a benefit to send new customers to the IGC.”

This article was edited for clarity.