Saturday morning. 6:30 am. Hot bagel and a cup of coffee.
Thumbing through the Sept/Oct issue of Green Profit Magazine. There's a lot of information about the OFA Short Course and Trade Show in this issue, and rightfully so. It was a great show and learning experience.
My friend Bill Calkins gives his farewell salute to us as he is moving up the chain of command at Ball Horticulture. Bill is taking on the position of Manager of Independent Garden Centers. If you are an independent garden center, keep an eye on Bill. He gets around and is very observant of things that can really work for garden centers. . . and he doesn't necessarily get his ideas from garden centers.
The Consumer Buzz Live event is covered pretty well. Kerry Herndon, a grower of Bromeliads and Orchids in Florida, wrote a column about the event and how the Internet was the underlying theme of the CBL event (p. 42). The panelists of 40 year olds said they wanted the garden centers to help them, get to know them, and maintain a relationship. They want to hear from the garden center every month about what they should be doing, whether it is with new things for gardening, or whether is has to do with the things they bought there.
These panelists also reenforced the data that says consumers go to the web to do research first, then go to the store to buy.
My friend Pete Bottomley wrote an article about how garden centers can succeed with customer seminars.
Bottom line take away this morning: We (consumer focused green industry businesses) need to do a better job of developing relationships with our customers, and find ways to establish the relationship that find them where they are.
Sun's up. Time to get moving.
Steve
All material is © Copyright 2008, Steve Cissel