Vinny Naab's Views

NURSERY SERVICE PROGRAMS

Over the last six to eight years, third-party nursery service has developed extensively in the mass-market arena, particularly at The Home Depot and Lowe's. More recently, as in this year, Wal-Mart has begun to test the concept in select markets and will be studying the results to see if the program bears expanding, maintaining or is deemed unnecessary.

The great debate begins as to why programs such as these would be necessary. After all, doesn't it seem logical that mega-retailers are much more capable logistically of efficiently hiring and training staff to order, maintain and merchandise live goods? Apparently, the answer is they are more than capable of doing this, but it's obviously more easily said than done.

Massive store growth amongst Wal-Mart, The Home Depot and Lowe's has contributed to a talent shortage of live goods experts in their stores at this time. This is not to imply that many of their stores do not have high-performing, expert individuals who can drive business, but I know from my own experience in 15 years at The Home Depot that this was much less the case in 2005 than it was in 1995. Early in the '90s, almost every Home Depot opened had experienced garden experts from the nursery industry to run these departments. This was easy when there were 50 to 100 stores, not 300 to 400.

If you are a grower serving these retailers, do you provide the service or pay for another grower or third party to do it?
How have these programs impacted your sell-through and shrink?
Share your thoughts by dropping us a line at benchrunner@meistermedia.com.

posted June 13, 2007

Making Up Lost Sales

This season obviously has been a huge struggle for all suppliers and retailers across the Northern part of the country and the Atlantic coastal markets in the North. This has really tested their limits as a supplier. The question is, "How far back can anyone come when you are down around 50 percent from a year ago, after what should have been your best couple of weeks in April?"

The answer is being told as we speak. A ton of ground is being made up, but how do you compensate for the loss of your ability to replant for May, when your April crops that should have been out the door are still sitting there? This is one of the things that big buyers may not completely understand. That is, when you have these types of bad early springs, your future potential may be limited by your supplier's abilities to "reload."

If the supplier doesn't have a limit on greenhouse space, then most likely no problem. If they do have limits, they either have to dump perfectly good product to get next month's product planted, or go without to a certain point later on. I think this was a problem common to almost every supplier in the Northern part of the country this spring.

Around the rest of the country, drought is slowing things down in Florida, and from what I hear, all retail is suffering as a result. Rains in Texas didn't help matters there. California was sensational earlier, when they were up against the record rains from a year ago, so they have been solid out there.

What was your experience as a grower this season? Were you able to make up lost ground? What strategies worked for you to drive sales? Let us know by dropping us a line at benchrunner@meistermedia.com.

posted May 23, 2007