Focused & flourishing

From Left:: Jason, Wes and CJ van Wingerden, and Scott Giesbrecht

Five years ago, John van Wingerden took a risk. Based on a gut feeling, the owner and founder of Green Circle Growers, one of the largest greenhouse operations in North America, decided to start producing phalaenopsis orchids.

Modeling after a grower in Holland, the Oberlin, Ohio, company added a state-of-the-art, 20-acre production facility for the new crop and took on a new marketing initiative. Being one of the few growers in North America to produce orchids, it faced the challenge of competing with growers overseas.

It was a risk worth taking.

Now, the Just Add Ice brand of orchids is a flourishing part of Green Circle’s business, so much so that the company has begun producing mini-orchids (it produced 5.5 million 5-inch orchids in 2012), and is currently testing anthuriums and assessing bonsai plants.

All of these crops are part of Green Circle’s plan to diversify its overall business, which saw more than $100 million in revenue in 2012.

“Diversification is probably the biggest thing we’re doing as a company,” says CJ van Wingerden, co-owner and operations manager. He’s one of five siblings involved in the company.

“More or less, either you’re a bedding plant grower or a pot plant grower, or a nursery, historically,” he says.

Adds Scott Giesbrecht, sales manager, “We kind of have a three-pronged diversification strategy. [It’s] maybe a little new and different from where our industry classically is, where you have guys that are focused, much more focused, on even those three that we just mentioned.”

The company’s three-pronged strategy consists of bedding plants, pot plants and plugs and liners. Green Circle decided to get into diversification to fill a need and keep up with changes in the industry.

“I think diversification, a lot of time, is driven primarily by risk,” Giesbrecht says. “Just in general, how we see the industry changing, to help meet needs on the grower side in terms of the plug and liner program, and then the consumer side, both on the outside of the home and the inside of the home.”

Facing the challenges
Green Circle has had success with diversification, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t faced its share of challenges.

“There are pros and cons of diversification,” Giesbrecht says. “In this business, the cons are additional processes, complexity of packaging production,” and more.

“You also lose focus on how your company started,” says Jason van Wingerden, who is also a co-owner and oversees marketing and purchasing.

Because of these challenges, the company chooses to focus on the specific crop it’s introducing (such as orchids) and have success with it before expanding into other areas.

“I think one thing we’ve learned in the last several years is that you have to be focused 100 percent on what you’re doing with diversification, and that you could lose your way real quick,” CJ says.

Giesbrecht agrees that it’s not about trying to grow every crop. Green Circle’s goal is to try to be better at its existing crops than anybody else in the industry. He says that applies not only to the indoor houseplants but to the company’s bedding plants and plug and liner business as well.

So how does the company go about picking crops? By determining whether a certain crop can serve the best value to the consumer, Giesbrecht says.

“It’s not necessarily about the ease of growing; it’s about value,” Wes van Wingerden says. He is another co-owner who oversees the growing team. “People think that Florida [or] southern California is the best place to have [tropical plants] grown. But we’ve seen we can grow a pretty competitive, quality plant.”

Green Circle Growers is able to produce high-quality, competitive plants by implementing low-cost production. This is the main reason it turned to its European competitors while modeling the orchid facility.

“They’re low-cost producers, but they don’t sacrifice quality. They’re still driving costs down, so modeling after that format makes a lot of sense,” Jason says.

The people factor
Building a highly efficient, automated facility is only one part of low-cost production. Green Circle also leverages the strength of its employees, many of whom have come from other industries. The company has found employees from several industries outside of horticulture, including manufacturing, insurance and medical.

“We used to think you have to bring hort people in here because they’re the only people who understand this. Well, we kind of want to bring in the guys who maybe have worked in the manufacturing setting and can take that knowledge, and then we can teach them the hort side,” Jason says.

Hiring smart people who can bring a new perspective has really helped the company better understand what drives its costs, Giesbrecht says. It’s also helped them learn where to make improvements.

“You think the way you’ve done something is the best way to do it, and that’s not always the case,” Wes says. “That’s why good, fresh eyes from outside the industry have been good for sales [and] good for operations.”

Of course, the company still searches for — and finds — talent within the industry. CJ says it’s been a challenge in the last 10 years to find those in horticulture, but Green Circle has a proactive approach to it.

“We’ve been tapping into a lot of horticulture schools, starting from the ground level — kids straight out of college — to get good, young minds that just need to be taught on the commercial side,” he says. “And I would say we’re involved quite heavily in the Big 10 schools.”

Wes says the company has also increased its internship program, and has hired a few employees from it.

While finding the right employees has played a role in low-cost production, in the end, the main thing driving it is consumer value, Giesbrecht says.

“The fundamental thing that the whole business is based on, if you break it down, is low-cost production. So, for example, in the orchid business we don’t go in small, we don’t go in with an existing facility, we don’t go in with marketing as it currently is in the U.S.,” he explains. “We do all these things; we go big … we go highly efficient, so that we’re the lowest-cost producer in the marketplace, and we invest heavily in marketing so that we attempt to change consumer perceptions of items.”

“Like Wes said, it’s more than ever driven by value, whereas in the past it was driven by things like price point or production efficiency,” Giesbrecht adds. “We would produce what we knew how to. Now, it’s driven by consumer value.”

Excelling in education
Communicating value to consumers has played a critical role in Green Circle’s success with orchids. And it all centers around an innovative marketing strategy that’s focused on education.

The information the company provides about orchid care on their website (www.justaddiceorchids.com) is designed to make people comfortable with the idea of purchasing an orchid, something that’s crucial in the effort to increase demand for the product.

“When we first decided that we wanted to do a crop like orchids, we said, ‘What can we do differently than other growers in the U.S.?’” Jason says. “The one big thing we saw was marketing. We felt that if we could make the consumer feel comfortable with the product, that we might not be able to see an immediate return on investment right away, but long term it’s going to show to be a great investment.

“Giving them the knowledge to do it is a huge benefit,” Jason adds. “If you ask someone why they didn’t buy an orchid, most of the time they’re going to say, ‘I don’t know how to take care of it.’ So the thought behind it was to give them all the info they need to have a successful journey with the orchid so that they want to come back to buy more and tell their friends about it too.”

Also part of the effort to make people comfortable with the product is the name itself: Watering Just Add Ice Orchids simply entails adding three ice cubes to the pot every week.

All of this education appears to be paying off. According to the company’s 2013 consumer report, which analyzes the demographics of the typical orchid consumer, 55 percent of people who responded to the survey stated they own more than two orchids. And 20 percent of respondents said they own five or more orchids.

“The number one thing preventing people from buying our product is fear of failure, so we construct all of our messaging around that,” Giesbrecht says, adding that the company partners with a local marketing firm that has helped them see their product “how the consumer sees it — not how we see it.”

Green Circle also employs the power of social media to get the word out about orchid value. The company has more than 22,000 likes on their Facebook page, and that number keeps growing.

“On Facebook, you see people posting on there saying, ‘Hey, I got this orchid and it’s been doing great for like three months now.’ They post it and post to all our people on our page and to all their friends,” Jason says.

If someone posts a comment saying their orchid died, Green Circle will send them a new one free of charge. “Guess what happens?” Jason says. “They get back online and say, ‘Guess what I received today?’”

This type of marketing won’t work for all crops, Giesbrecht says. With orchids, “We have the benefit of frequency of exposure. We’re on shelves 52 weeks a year.

“Branding with consumers has been historically difficult in our business because we’re very seasonal,” he adds. “We have the benefit of frequency of impression,” so building brand awareness through ongoing education about orchid care works.

So what’s on the company’s marketing agenda for the future? Right now they only invest in education-centric marketing for the orchids, but that may change as they introduce other unique products to the market.

Regarding the anthuriums that are in the testing phase, “We want to able to show the consumer this is a great value, this is how you take care of it. You can be successful and you will have a great product that will last,” Jason says. “We just don’t want to throw a plant out there. Our responsibility doesn’t end when our product leaves our docks — it ends when the consumer is happy and wants to buy another one or tell their friends about it.”

Photography by Jerry Mann