Town Meeting 2012

Radical Enough?

Thanks to all the folks who showed up last week at the OFA Town Meeting. Attendance seemed to be up over last year, and the crowd was eager to talk. It was an honor to be invited back as a panelist.

The topic of discussion was, “Putting the steak back in the sizzle.” It was a good discussion, but there was surprisingly little argument that much of the public are finding failure and disappointment from our products. I thought this would be a pretty sensitive issue. It’s not easy to accept that we might be failing the consumer more than delighting her.

5 Take-aways

1. The value is in the relationship. This is the gold mine we’re sitting on, and perhaps squandering. Everything else is just window dressing (sizzle?); all the value in the supply chain rests on the relationship to the final purchaser. Who owns this relationship? Who acts like they own it? Who’s trying to grow it?
2. For growers: plants should improve once the buyer gets it home, not decline. Less P.O.S. (Plants on Steroids), please.
3. For Garden Centers: Care more about the customer saying “wow” when they see the plant at their home every day than if they say “wow” when they are in your store. Do they want your store to look nice or their home to look nice? (Of course, you’d better do both…but care about the customer MORE.)
4. Don’t assume you know what you think you know.For instance, how well do we know the people buying plants? What motivates them? One person said, “The folks coming to your store are doing it because they have a graduation or a wedding or a party and they have to get the yard looking great.” Sounds nice, but is that really true? What percentage are motivated by special events? We rely way too much on anecdotal stories when it comes to understanding the potential plant buying public. With the “Grapevine” survey over a decade old (was it 1999?), we are pretty much navigating in the dark, on guesswork and hunches.

   

5. Steak is a service. This is pretty much my conclusion from the entire discussion. What is steak? (In other words, what is success for the lady buying plants?) My answer is that it’s not a product; it’s a service. (In other words, a satisfying steak is cooked by a competent chef, not a microwave.) Success requires three things:

• Design. Forget “dig, drop, done.” Haphazard design leads to lousy results. The right plant must go in the right spot for the right purpose. Without thoughtful design, the homeowner will fail to get results that both sizzle and satisfy.
• Care. Success takes actually caring about the lady spending her hard earned cash for our plants. Which do you want more, her money or her happiness?
• Time. It’s a precious commodity, but a success doesn’t happen overnight (well, it can, but that kind of success rarely lasts long).

Radical Shift.

The Town Meeting was important to me. It got me thinking about things, some new and some old ideas I’ve shared a little bit about before. I see the potential for there to be a radical shift in the industry, a change for the better. I hope to explain this “brave new world” as best I can in the next few months here on OpenHort. Here’s a tease…things I think it’s time we “forgot”…

• Forget the retail shelf.
• Forget Spring.
• Forget the “destination garden center.”
• Forget annuals.
• Forget trucks.
• Forget “More than Just Pretty.”
• Forget Boomers.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to know if you’d like more!

Art

PS: About the picture of Lloyd Traven…

After the 2011 Town Meeting, I made a funny mashup image of Lloyd (the moderator of the event) and Norman Rockwell’s famous painting, “Freedom of Speech” from the Four Freedoms series published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1943. So, this year I decided to continue the theme, and that made this image a pretty logical result.

Lloyd is a good sport. I’m thankful he has a sense of humor! Life is so much more fun that way. For a larger version of the full painting, click the image below.