I sell flowers, plants and… purses?

Examine your customer demographics and stock new inventory to attract and appeal

I spoke to a colleague of mine who is also in the garden centre industry. His family runs a very successful garden centre called Dutch Growers in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The amazing thing is that the fastest growing category for their business is women’s fashion, apparel, purses and jewellery. In a garden centre! And they’re not the only ones!

As you can imagine, this sparked a lot of great conversations among other garden centre owners. The topic of selling apparel and jewellery in a garden store was discussed and debated, with some believing that these product lines go too far away from a garden centre’s core business, plants and trees.

My take on the subject is best summed up by pointing out that in the early 1980’s, most garden centre operators truly believed that selling Christmas décor had no place in a garden store. Now, Christmas has become the second highest selling season for most garden centre operators. What we once cringed at and thought ridiculous is now very much a big part of who we are as garden centre operators.

So why not apparel? Why not jewellery? Who is coming into your store to begin with? For us it’s predominantly women, ages 30 to 60. When our shoppers are in our stores, why not offer to sell them something else that they naturally like? I say go for it!

Make sure you take baby steps and don’t kill yourself on inventory, but if you can expand into a brand new product category that will appeal to those customers already walking into your store? Perfect – you may very well have a brand new, high growth business opportunity in front of you.

So my question to you is; “Who are the customers you are currently attracting? What new product line could you look at carrying that might appeal to them?”

Who knows, maybe you’ll find your next fastest growing category for your business.