Yes, Christmas time and the Holiday Season is here. You know it first-hand by just the hustle and bustle around your Center today. Most likely the sounds and smell of evergreens proves it.
I want to share a special message we have for you, our Group Centers, from all of our Group Team. You can see a preview of it by just clicking on the image above.
It is so obvious. All you have to do is observe advertising trends to see how plants and gardening are being used to capture attention. We see major brands trying to leverage the natural "goodness" of plants and the activity of gardening as they promote whatever they want to sell. Most have nothing to do with plants or gardening.
It must be one of two possible strategies for why they would position their product or services parallel to plants or gardening. First, it might be to just capture the attention of the audience, realizing plants and gardening are one of the top growth categories over the past 18 months. The second possible strategy might be simply trying to absorb some of the positive "greenness" and to it imply they care, their products are wholesome, or good for you or the environment. It's like saying, "Hey our products are just as good as plants or gardening."
Navigating or setting the right course can be tricky. There has been some Group discussion recently on how to see over the horizon into 2022 with the last two years in the rearview mirror. When I think of navigating and today's tools for today's travelers, I am reminded of the way our kids (grown adults today) navigate as they travel.
I admit, I am revealing what generation I grew up in and I am just as quick to rely on my iPhone to set the course by SIRI and Apple Maps. It's really cool and fast and I can almost be on autopilot. There's not much thinking needed except avoiding the other cars. But at the same time, I feel we are missing out on some very important skills. The art and skills of navigation.
Just imagine... No boundaries. No restrictions. No barriers. Nothing but "blue sky" space to think about things you normally don't. It's like those long summer days when you were a kid and had a world of time to dream big things and make stuff up. Let's open the doors and windows of your mind to just... imagine.
In 2015, The Fall Event was in Orlando and we had the opportunity to have Simon T. Bailey present to The Group. His presentation was based on his then most current book, 'Release Your Brilliance'. Simon said, "Up to the age of 4, most children are operating at a genius (or brilliance) level." He went on to say by the time they reach their early 20's only 20% are there and by their early 30's, only 2% are operating at a genius level. He added, by the time the average child is 17 years of age they have heard the word NO 150,000 times and YES only 5,000 times. Simon has continued on his quest to help everyone find their brilliance. Since then, he has authored five additional books to help encourage his audience's brilliance. You can see them HERE.
As a Garden Center connecting with your audience is extremely important. It always has been. Connecting happens in a multitude of ways. It certainly happens whenever the customer enters your Center and interacts with your team, and shops for your plants and products.
The other ways of connecting has been changing over the last two decades. More connecting today happens through your messaging or sharing of information through the various channels of communication. At the same time, your audience is slowly changing and the way they want to receive your information may be different than how you are positioned to share information today.
When our girls were young, we stumbled upon a magical story crafted in an animated film titled The Man Who Planted Trees. The fictional story paints a simple yet powerful and unforgettable message set in the early 1900s. It introduced us to a shepherd named Elzéard Bouffier who quietly takes on the task of planting 100 acorns a day in an effort to reforest a desolate region in the French Alps. As the story unfolds, you see the shepherd's work transforming the region as life (and hope) returns and the world around is renewed.
Having the right tools can make a world of difference. And knowing what tools to use for the job or task is equally important. If you've been around The Group and read my messages over the years you certainly have heard me refer to the POWERtools area of our WebSystem. It is located under the Clients-Only pull-down menu and contains all of our tools for download.
This week we feature two of those POWERtools in a message from Robert Hendrickson as he created both during his decades of helping Garden Centers. They are the Monthly Department Review and the Ad Planner, which are now updated for 2022 (both USA and Canada versions).
Does the image above look like your Marketing challenge today?
We know it has already begun. You've already started some of your planning for the next spring season. I know you have questions about what to expect and what you will need to prepare for as you do all of your planning. How do you budget for 2022? As a total Group, we ended 2020 in the mid +20% range ahead of 2019 sales, and it appears 2021 may be slightly into double-digit growth on top of that. But what lies ahead in 2022?
Just like the image above, your crystal ball may not be very clear. At the same time, both Steve Bailey and Tim Quebedeaux have been expressing some concerns about inventory levels as we near the end of the selling season. Will you carry over more products than you should? The answer to that may be in Steve Bailey's message in the Week 37 WDR cover page... do you need to re-read that?
While the title for this message can be for you, I am really presenting this as an idea for our Centers to consider as a message to promote to prospective team members (new-hires) in the coming seasons.
Evidence is mounting that Garden Centers can be in a prime position to capture the attention of a large number of Millennials who have discovered over the last 18 months they really do not want to return to their typical work environment. I can see the job listing now... Find Your Work Zen at (insert your garden center name here)!
For everyone who has attended The Fall Event, you know one thing you can count on is recognizing the most successful performing Garden Centers from our two financial sharing programs, the Weekly Department Review (WDR) and the Annual P&L Study. During the first day of The Fall Event 2021, we did just that. In fact, this year we handed out more awards than ever before!
When Steve and Tim sent me the reports for both the WDR and the P&L Study, I knew there would be a lot of awards this year. But it was when I picked up all of the plaques at our trophy supplier that it really hit me just how many more there were this year. In fact, we had to rent a U-Haul trailer for the trip to Wilmington – for the first time ever!
Over the past two weeks, we have been experiencing Florence Williams' wonderfully impactful story of 'The Nature Fix.' It is the result of her multi-year work of documenting WHY nature is so important in the health and welfare of every human being.
Many of the details contained in her book support what we all have known for years about the importance of plants and the activity of gardening. We just did not have the science to back up our beliefs... until now.
Great ideas are in the making. I believe this to be TRUE right here within The Group. In the coming weeks we will have a whole collection of ideas that can help fuel your marketing message for 2022 and beyond! And it all begins at The Fall Event with Florence Williams and her book... The Nature Fix.
At first glance this might appear as a strange combination. Train verses Garden Retailing? But bear with me as I share some thoughts I have had in recent months. This idea came to me as I was talking with prospective Centers who asked about what we do in The Group and why they should consider joining. Basically, "Why The Group?"
As I thought about my response, aside from all the normal unique sharing, programs and services The Group offers, strangely enough what I have told our daughter and her husband about buying their first home came to mind. We have had numerous conversations with them about how home prices keep going up and how much more difficult it might be to get into your very first home. I said, "Home ownership is like jumping onto a moving train. Once on-board you gain equity as the overall market goes up and as you pay down the mortgage. If you are not on the train, you are loosing ground, going backwards as the train moves forward."
You have them... all of us do. It's the idea that comes to you late at night or in the early hours of the morning and you just have to write a few notes before it's gone. It can also come at unusual times during our daily activities. It might be while you are shopping at a frequently visited store, or in line at the drive-through restaurant, or just driving down the road – or mowing the lawn. My Dad often said some of the best thinking happens while on a tractor. Some of the most ordinary things can trigger the very BEST ideas. They can also present some of your biggest questions.
Kids have "wide-open" creativity skills with no throttles, governors, or constraints that most of us adults have developed. If you look closely at the photo above you will see the titles... "Thinker, Thinking Cap and Idea-O-Meter" depicting the story of how kids don't have the "I Can't" or "It Won't Work" weights holding them back. As we progress through life we encounter many "guardrails" that tend to build upon each other and restrict our creativity. In the following text I found some wonderful words written by Samuel Ullman (1840-1924), an American businessman, poet, humanitarian, and religious leader, born in Hechingen, Germany and died in Birmingham, AL. Here's an interesting introduction I found to Ullman's famous poem 'Youth.'
That was on everyone's mind last week as we converged upon Columbus, OH for Cultivate'21... the very first industry trade show since early last year. And it was GREAT in many ways!
If you were with us last Thursday during the final GROUPtalk LIVE Series session, you heard Ken Gronbach say these words, "If you want me to tell bad news for the garden industry, I'll have to make up something, because there just isn't any." This session was a followup to his keynote presentation last August as we began our series.
Ken is a demographer and his studies analyze world populations, growth, shifts, and trends. Ken's message reinforced what our Centers have experienced the past 16 months – countless new customers, many of them young, and all wanting more gardening and plant experiences.
The Love of Plants can be a powerful thing. It's powerful in many ways. If you consider the simple relationship we humans have with plants... we breath oxygen they give off and they need the carbon dioxide we exhale. That's about as close as a relationship gets - the very definition of symbiotic.
While you might not consider that to be a form of love, how we see people interact with plants can truly be expressed as a form of love. And, they will certainly say how much they love to garden, how they love their flowers, trees, and plants and how they love how the activity of gardening or being around all these plants makes them feel.
Relationships. It is the lifeblood of a successful career or business. It spans all aspects of your operation... Your customers. Your staff and management team. Your growers and hardline vendors. Other relationships you have are here within The Group. The relationships built with The Group's team of Service Providers and your peer Centers is something that is very unique today.