Just a hunch

When Mike Branch started with Branch-Smith in 1980, the printing and publishing company had just one weekly magazine – Southern Florist & Nurseryman.

"It covered the southern half of the United States, and it covered everything from flower arranging and selling to moving a huge, big tree from one location to another, so everything commercially horticulture, it covered in some way," the former president says.

But as the '80s progressed, Branch started to notice that people weren't as interested in weekly news, the economy was becoming more national and the industry was becoming more specialized. He began to think that perhaps the company could spin off a publication from SF&N devoted wholly to greenhouse growers.

With an idea in his head, Branch started down a new publishing path, and here's how he navigated that path.

Vet your ideas
Any good business venture starts with an idea, but before that idea can fully take root, it needs to be vetted and the facts revealed, so Branch started to explore the possibility of launching a new magazine and looked at the facts.

"Everything is an economic decision," he says. "Half our advertising was coming from those growing under cover in some way, so we thought, 'Here's something that makes sense,' so we explored the possibility."

In addition to what seemed like an obvious revenue stream, he looked at competition. At the time, there was no magazine that took advertising and was dedicated solely to greenhouse growers.

Even though there appeared to be no competition and there appeared to be available sources of revenue, he also needed to make sure there was enough of a market and enough specialization going on to warrant the new publication. They went and pulled some lists and found about 15,000 people listed as commercial growers of plants under cover, so the market seemed to be there.

On top of that, he did "research," which he says wasn't formal.

"Our research was just asking some people," he says with a laugh. "There was no big market research project that went on other than, 'Hey, you're our friend, would you endorse the idea of it so we can put it on postcards and send it out say you think it's a great idea, and you're an industry leader?'"

But people did it, so it reaffirmed the market was there. So seeing that and how the market was changing, he decided to take a business risk and start what was then called Greenhouse Manager.

Create a plan
Knowing he was going to launch Greenhouse Manager, Branch next had to figure out the details.

"We were confident in what it could do, but we were nervous about the money because things were extremely tight at that point," he says.

Any good idea requires a plan to move forward, so he started creating one.

First he needed to decide who would be in charge. He didn't have a lot of contacts, but he hired a guy from the Dallas Morning News who contributed a lot to the garden columns to serve as editor.

He also had to figure out how to get it out to the industry. The base for SF&N was a few thousand, and not all of those were greenhouse growers, but many were, so he and his team decided to launch the magazine alongside SF&N.

"To our own readers, we bound it inside of our magazine for five issues," Branch says. "For everyone else, we bound it separately and mailed it separately, basically looking for who would pay for it as a first pass."

Then he had to get his numbers up, so he got some controlled circulation – meaning people he specifically wanted to receive the publication whether or not they paid for it – to add to the initial list. He also sent out requests saying, "There's nothing out there like this, do you want to get it?"

"There was nothing else out there, and people responded really well," Branch says. "It was the right time, right place."

Before he knew it, he had more pages than he could have imagined early on.

"It was a great windfall because then we had the cash to grow the thing, but early on, it was a wing and a prayer there," he says. "You felt confident it could happen, but you never know until you put something tangible on the street. That's why with marketing research, you can ask, 'Would you, would you, would you," but it's not necessarily an indicator of what they'll do when the time comes."

Differentiate
Within a year of launching Greenhouse Manager, the competition got in the game too.

"We hit that magic moment in history where everyone was wanting to see something spun out, and then we had people joining us quickly," Branch says. "All of a sudden the industry was able to support three different publications with its advertising, which speaks to the marketability of this product."

Clearly, his hunch that the industry needed this had been right to attract so much competition, but now he had to find a way to differentiate the magazine so readers and advertisers would choose it over the competition.

"We decided another way we needed to stand out was to create concept covers," he says. "This was way before Photoshop. You had to set the cover up with the right light and get it right, and it had to look real. … It helped us stand out in the marketplace because nobody else was doing it. That's what marketing is, and boom there it was. It was an unfulfilled niche, and growers were just hungry for any information that would help them get a leg up in the covered environment growing type operation."

That magazine, from the get-go, delved into big industry issues, such as energy costs and how to lower them as research picked up at universities about energy efficiencies in greenhouses. They also looked at systems and technology to help greenhouse owners.

"A number of systems were just trying to be introduced, and they would come up, but widespread adoption was hard because most people didn't have the numbers and data to put into that system," Branch says. "It just indicated how poorly records were being kept. There were lots of issues that were worth covering as we went along."

They also saw that grocery stores were just starting to carry fresh-cut flowers, so they looked at how growers could market particular crops. It created national discussions in the industry.

"It was an exciting time to be looking at those things because there were so many evolving, dynamic topics out there that needed discussing, and in an era before Facebook or chats and listservs and other ways of creating online communities, this was it," Branch says.

"We all want to feel like we're not the step child, and we all want to be front and center in some community, and this kind of thing established a community where they could discuss those things."

Evolve
With any good business venture, it's not enough to be satisfied with the status quo, so the magazine has continued to evolve and never stayed the same for too long.

That original community of a few thousand readers has now grown into about 21,000 readers. During that time, the magazine went through several name changes, going from Greenhouse Manager to GMPro, then Greenhouse Management & Production and then finally last year to its current Greenhouse Management. The magazine also got new management when GIE Media acquired it from Branch-Smith in 2008, and most recently the magazine has again expanded its circulation to include the entire Canadian market.

As Greenhouse Management grew and evolved over the years, it's also blazed the trail in technology.

Branch recalls around 1990 when Greenhouse Manager was the first in the industry to create a weekly e-newsletter for strictly greenhouse readers – with just 30 e-mail addresses.

"You're out there helping to initiate and setting goals and helping people progress into new and better things, but you're encouraging them to go out and start new things," Branch says.

The magazine's technological evolution continued with the launch of its very own website, and then with digital editions, and then in 2010 the Greenhouse Management app was unveiled.

This year the magazine celebrates 30 years, and while its name has changed, technology has evolved and ownership has shifted, Branch's original mission hasn't. Greenhouse Management will continue to evolve to meet the needs of growers across the continent and provide them with the tools they need to better grow their products and manage their businesses.

"[Growers] aren't just praying for a change in the economy to make their old stuff happen," Branch says. "They're changing, and I think that you've got publications like Greenhouse Management that are privileged to be a part of that process and be leaders in that process, otherwise everyone is out there floundering in their own small world and not seeing the big picture. We're glad to see … that mission continue to take place, whether it's under one ownership or another."