Consumers Plant Soiree Kawaii Combos at Rockledge Gardens
September 28, 2021 Suntory Flowers wrapped up its summer with one final stop on its Alive With Flowers Airstream tour – Rockledge Gardens, a destination garden center in Rockledge, FL. The mission? Introduce more consumers to Soiree Kawaii catharanthus, an ideal bedding plant for Florida.
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Suntory set up a planting station next to its shiny refurbished Airstream camper trailer, a 1971 Land Yacht. Customers of all ages planted up the red, white, and blue Soiree Kawaii combo, Lady Liberty, featuring Red Shades, White Peppermint, and Blueberry Kiss. Participants agreed these flowers are cute, which is what kawaii means in Japanese. As an added treat, Suntory gave away premium popsicles from River Road Coffee & Popsicles in Cocoa Beach.
“This event exposed consumers to plants that maybe they would have overlooked or not been familiar with,” says Delilah Onofrey, Marketing Director for Suntory Flowers. “Most people buy what they already know. Their success with these plants can create a positive connection to both the product and the retailer and encourage a willingness to try something new.”
Interested in holding a similar event at your garden center? If so, Onofrey says it’s important to have plants, programming, and promotion.
“We had thought about doing this after Cultivate’21, but there would have been no plants in mid July. We need to make sure plants are available,” Onofrey says. “Fortunately, Soiree Kawaii is a product Rockledge Gardens already carries and the season is extended.”
For the event, Suntory had liner trays full of Soiree Kawaii from Sun-Fire in the three colors for the combo. It worked with Rockledge on the pots, soil, and having water and electricity.
“In addition to Rockledge doing social media posts and eblasts that drove interest, people already signed up for three other workshops, which drew people naturally inclined to make and take planters,” Onofrey says. “So there was a natural base of people who were going to be at the garden center that day.”
One thing Onofrey says she noticed right away is most people preferred for the Suntory team to make the planters.
“We gave them a choice of planting their own or taking one we planted,” Onofrey says. “Children enjoyed the planting activity, but most adults just grabbed a free planter.”
Check out the slideshow above for a closer look at the event.
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