Comment Of The Week: Grower-Retailer Relationships

By Greenhouse Grower staff|September 27, 2011

Retailers: Do you feel your relationships with your growers are healthy? Our sister magazine, Today’s Garden Center, posed this question as a poll to its readers late last month. Here’s what one independent retailer had to say:

“I feel as though relationships with growers are like all other relationships: They require consistent communication and feedback so that good is rewarded and problems can be addressed and repaired. When quality slips, a quick but helpful phone call or email makes sure we all stay on the same page – making our customers happy!”

Here’s how retailers responded in the Today’s Garden Center poll:

• About 24 percent say their relationships are “very healthy”
• About 33 percent describe their relationships with growers as “OK”
• 3 percent say their relationship is “slipping”
• About 6 percent say they are “shopping for new vendors” due to a “series of problems that have not been resolved”
• About 33 percent indicate they grow their own plants so they don’t work with other growers

Let’s look at the flip side of those relationships? How would you describe your relationships with retailers? Are they very healthy? OK? Slipping? Are you looking for new retailers because your current ones are simply uncooperative? Tell us in the comments section below.