Certified Shopify Online Garden Center Platform Now Live
Laurel & Bee Garden and Goods demo website for the Certified Shopify Online Garden Center | A24 Consulting
A24 Consulting has announced the official launch of The Certified Shopify Online Garden Center, a comprehensive, fully managed direct-to-consumer selling and marketing platform for all local garden center businesses.
The Certified Shopify Online Garden Center answers the question every garden center owner is asking: “How do I add an e-commerce revenue stream to supplement my brick-and-mortar sales and make the most money with the least amount of hassle?” Through the market intelligence of A24 Consulting, there is now a unified commerce stack that provides any local plant seller with a world-class solution for a new daily revenue stream without hours and hours of staff input.
Created to embrace the business model evolution of a local garden center and designed for product selling in 2025, each online store is a turn-key, hands-off solution branded for the local retailer.
The Certified Shopify Online Garden Center Difference
Here’s what comes with each Certified Shopify Online Garden Center:
- A fully developed and branded ShopifyPlus store.
- Completely merchandised store with a 52-week assortment of high-quality gardening products direct-to-consumer fulfilled from best-in-class vendors, including ongoing seasonal management and product introductions.
- Managed email marketing to the retailer’s email list designed to provide a daily revenue stream.
- Personalized customer service tailored to each individual store.
When creating this system, A24 Consulting co-founders Clint Albin and Katie Elzer-Peters realized that they couldn’t just provide two or three parts of the e-commerce equation. They needed to handle the entire operation from start to finish in order to fulfill their mission: to reverse the loss of local plant retail businesses.
‘Fresh from the Grower’
Harnessing the power of Shopify, each Certified Shopify Online Garden Center is fully merchandised by top-of-the-line growers, fulfillers, and manufacturers including:
- Cavano’s Perennials
- CobraHead Tools
- Costa Farms
- Easy to Grow Bulbs
- Gardener’s Supply Company
- Hoffman Nursery
- Live Good Logistics
- Monrovia
- Oasis Forage
- Organic Plant Magic
- The Holland Group
- The Sill
This supplier network spans the country and provides a practically endless aisle for independent garden retailers to fill in gaps in inventory and provide on-site special ordering for customers.
Paired with managed marketing via the highest-rated enterprise digital marketing conversion platform, Bloomreach, and with customer care handled by A24 through the established customer service platform Gorgias, any local garden center can have access to a year-round weatherproof revenue stream.
A Fresh Approach
According to Albin, building this commerce stack independently would cost $75,000 for the technology, $75,000 in employee oversight, and $125,000 in annual maintenance. “We have created a solution that is priced to be within reach of any sized garden center,” Albin says. “During the pandemic, the industry realized that local retail garden centers are designed to be effective as a cash-n-carry model; they are not designed to be commingled with a pick-n-pack model. Now they can have the revenue from e-commerce without the internal operational conflicts needed to put a plant in a box.”
Elzer-Peters says that the unified commerce stack approach puts their e-commerce marketing tool years ahead of email tools currently used in the industry. “Tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact are good for what they were designed to do — send a one-way message,” However, “The type of marketing tool that retailers need now is one that is designed to send personalized recommendations based on a two-way flow of data between the customer and the e-commerce site. The Bloomreach tool can convert an email list of 5,000 into $260,000 in top-line sales with a 1% conversion rate.”
Invitation to Explore
The Certified Shopify Online Garden Center invites all retail garden centers to explore how to put the power of this technology behind their local brand and provide their customers the shopping experience they’ve come to expect from their favorite retailers. Visit A24 Consulting to schedule a discovery call and view the flagship demo site, Laurel & Bee Garden and Goods.
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