Gut Check: Is Your Operation Ready for the Next Disruption?

Every business in every industry relies on routine. For many floriculture operations, that routine goes as follows: Summer and fall mean production planning and ordering. Winter means addressing any lingering concerns while growing your plants. Spring is for finishing those plants and getting them out the door. Once the benches are empty, it’s rinse and repeat.

That’s what makes the current situation involving BFG Supply, one of the industry’s main distributors, so frustrating. After weeks of speculation and uncertainty among customers about its future, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Aug. 18 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. According to a report on Bondoro.com, which offers alerts and comprehensive summaries of Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, the “debtors attribute the filing not to a single event but to more than two years of compounding operational, financial, and liquidity deterioration.”

The BFG Chapter 11 filing is relevant at a time when many growers, particularly smaller businesses, rely heavily on their distributor partners.

“Most greenhouse owners do not have time to be experts on everything, so they count on their distributors to track what’s happening in the supply chain and stay ahead of any issues related to pricing or delivery time,” says Rodd Moesel, owner of American Plant Products. “During the initial phase of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, when fertilizer supplies were at risk, it was the distributors who were figuring out how to maintain the product pipeline.”

The larger lesson in the BFG story is a wake-up call for growers to take a hard look at where their businesses are vulnerable before the next disruption occurs. Knowing when you’re overly dependent on one supplier is part of it. Other key factors include taking stock of your business’s costs and margins, collecting and organizing data, and fostering relationships that will allow you to respond quickly when conditions change.

Know Where You’re Exposed

You may have long-standing relationships with a preferred distributor, but you should also identify backup suppliers for every critical input before you need them.

It’s no different from how you might manage your home insurance policy, suggests Stephen Van Wingerden, co-founder of Silver Fern.

“I have a great relationship with our insurance company, but I also shop around each year just to make sure I’m getting the coverage I need at a price that makes sense,” he says.

“Have a succession plan for your vendors just like you have a succession plan for people,” adds Brett Kresin, Chief Financial Officer — Live Goods at Central Garden & Pet, which owns Bell Nursery, one of Greenhouse Grower’s Top 100 Growers, in Maryland.

But don’t make it all about price without considering the long-term value of the relationship, cautions Moesel.

“If you have a partner that takes care of you and works hard on your behalf, don’t move away from them based on a few cents in cost,” he says.

Once you’ve re-evaluated your suppliers, look for opportunities to leverage your position.

Larger greenhouse operations often have more room to negotiate on price or volume. John Beauford, Chief Technology Officer at Silver Fern, says if you’re not in this category, you may have to do more work.

Beauford recommends being proactive and engaging early.

“The earlier in the season you engage with a supplier, the more willing they’ll be to adjust pricing,” he says. “If you wait until just before the spring rush, you’re going to be locked into what they’re asking.”

It’s also possible to be creative in how you place orders, which could mean looking for multi-year, volume-based discounts. That might require some advance financial planning, Van Wingerden says, but you’ll also gain more certainty in a reliable supply.

But be careful about overbooking, cautions Moesel.

“I recommend booking 70% to 80% of what you know you’ll need up front, and as the growing season approaches, you can buy that last 20% out of the warehouse for just-in-time delivery,” he says.

Control What You Can Control

While you’re taking a second look at your distributor relationships, there are other steps you should prioritize throughout the year, every year, to help you plan for the future. It’s all about controlling what you can control.

“The biggest thing you should be able to control is how you operate. You can’t control the consumer, the politics that drive issues such as tariffs, or even the weather,” says Mauricio Manotas, who spent several years at Ludvig Svensson and Ecoation before founding Green Laniel Consulting in May 2025. “The things you can control include your efficiency, your costs, and your data.”

Beauford agrees, pointing out that you’re more likely to absorb cost increases if you can make up for them through efficiency gains and cost control in your production processes. That control starts with measuring and recording what you can in your operation. Manotas says it’s hard to change or improve if you’re not doing this.

“We need to get out of the ‘feeling’ business, which I know is hard because so many decisions are based on personal experience,” he says. “The technology exists to measure and manage operational data, but I still see too many cases of growers failing to take advantage of these tools.”

Analyze Your Cost Structure

If you’re relying on data housed in siloed Excel spreadsheets, it can be difficult and time-consuming to manage it all effectively and identify important patterns.

“We’ve invested in our ERP system to do much of the work for us so we can see trends and discover any issues a lot quicker than we did in years past,” says Bell Nursery’s Kresin. “These data-based AI technologies help us streamline activities from our finance department all the way down to production.”

Smaller operations can turn to tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot while they plan for an ERP implementation. “The only investment is time sitting in front of a screen, and if you invest the time, you can mitigate your risk,” Kresin says.

Kresin also points out that while many growers have a good grasp of labor costs, they sometimes overlook overhead, depreciation, equipment expenses, and other hidden costs that can significantly impact their overall financial picture.

“You can start by leveraging your P&L, balance sheets, and tracking your EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization), but that alone won’t show you where you can identify savings,” he adds.

This time of year is ideal for reviewing your cost structure.

Silver Fern’s Beauford says, “There are so many variables in today’s market that you need to know what you paid last year, how material and shipping costs are changing, how your margins will be affected, and what your go-forward plan should look like based on this.”

One element that gets lost in planning is SKU rationalization.

“It’s a hard thing to do if you have customers asking for multiple products, but if you review your production plans over perhaps the last three to four years, it’s likely you’ll find you have way too many SKUs,” Beauford says. If you fear that’s the case, do an 80/20 analysis — again, this is where tracking accurate data will help. The general goal should be 20% of your product line driving 80% of your revenue.

“You can eliminate costs by producing less of the things that don’t generate revenue and focusing that effort and cost on the things that do,” he says. “You won’t be changing your entire cost structure, but you will be amplifying what’s working well for your business and removing products that aren’t pulling their weight.”

Having those “systems of record” tied to your SKUs will help when it comes time to negotiate pricing with your vendors. “It gives you the ability to quickly run reports and provide the most accurate, up-to-date information,” Van Wingerden says.

Educate Your Team

Kresin’s best advice for maximizing gains you can find in data and cost management is to educate your entire team and encourage accountability.

“My goal as a CFO is not to make everyone an accountant, but to make sure they understand that every decision they make is connected to profitability,” he says. “It’s easy for your managers to focus on their individual areas of the company, but if you can show them the P&L and balance sheet, they can better understand how all the numbers connect. When you use numbers to engage your team, you can generate new ideas and perhaps even retain talent because they can see the important role they play.”

The next disruption may have nothing to do with a distributor. It could be another input shortage, a tariff, a customer change, or something none of us sees coming. But knowing about your operation — and where it’s vulnerable — will help you respond when it happens.

“You need to pay the bills for next month, but if you’re only focusing on that, you’ll end up in a constant hamster wheel,” Moesel says. “No one knows what the future holds, but if you equip yourself for the long term, you’ll have an advantage when it comes time to pivot.”