All-America Selections celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, and as part of the celebration, Greenhouse Management will interview a different AAS judge each month to talk about how he or she runs his or her business and what AAS means to them. This is the second installment of the 12-part series.
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Building customer service Welby Gardens has been fortunate to have been in business for 64 seasons now and has had many customers that have been with the business for more than 50 years, but CEO Al Gerace and his team doesn’t take that for granted. “There’s always a constant change and turnover of customers, and you have to be ready to take on new customers,” he says. “Some customers are either going out of business or retiring or changing management, and you have to be flexible and look for those new opportunities to take care of that new customer as well as to maintain the old customers.” Focusing on customer service is absolutely critical in your business, but he says you need to focus more on taking care of your best customers. “I have a basic philosophy that all customers are equal but some are more equal than others,” Gerace says. “Make sure you take care of the people that are serious about the business and that are the better customers – not just in volume, but people who make good partners for yourself, they’re committed to you as well as you are to them.” |
Over the years, Al Gerace started to notice a big problem facing Welby Gardens.
“It seems like as time has gone on, especially for young people coming into our business, after they’ve had three, four, five years, they’re ready to move on to some other level,” the CEO says. “The most challenging thing is being able to retain quality people and to be able to, as you integrate new people into the organization, pass on the knowledge that’s been acquired over the years. It seems like you’re always in a situation where people are learning and making some of the same mistakes.”
While it’s hard, Gerace has found that giving people new opportunities within your business helps.
“[It’s] staying in good communication with those employees and being able to keep them moving up or acquiring more information or more responsibilities within the company,” he says. “That’s probably the best way of retaining the individuals and keeping them moving.”
He says you also have to be open with your employees.
 Al Gerace and his team at Welby Gardens in Colorado have been involved in AAS since the 1970s. |
“It’s getting involved in the whole picture, sharing information – both financial as well as goals within the organization,” Gerace says. “Help them to buy into those particular goals, and it’s setting realistic, yet ambitious, goals for the future and for the individual as well as for their role within the company.”
Sometimes it can be hard to find that balance and know how much to push your team.
“You have to look at your history and see what’s really achievable and also study the particular circumstances rather than just push, push, push,” he says. “It’s a question of what potential is. Where are things moving in the company and what’s realistic? Are you going to set a goal of doubling something that you’ve never had more than a 10 percent increase? You have to look at how you’ve been able to fulfill goals in the past or what the potential is within the economic circumstances of the time and what’s the growth potential in the company.”
For more: Welby Gardens, www.hardyboyplant.com
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Welby Gardens and AAS Al Gerace and his team at Welby Gardens in Colorado have been involved with AAS since the 1970s. “I got involved because often times a variety would be an item that didn’t do well in our dry climate,” says Gerace, CEO. “It was important that we were able to put a voice to it. I worked with one of the judges who had been very active in AAS, and he encouraged me to set up a trial ground here in Colorado.” Greenhouse Management spoke with Gerace about how AAS has helped his organization.
It helps in the sense that if you have the things that people are looking for, it’s going to help your business considerably. We’ve always promoted that and new varieties and keeping our brand fresh with new varieties and whatnot. It’s helped to maintain a position within the supply chain of having what people are looking for. The first question that anyone asks when they come into a garden center is, ‘What’s new.’ Having the All-America Selections, which are all new varieties, of course helps in that cause.
It’s significant for any grower to be involved with AAS because...the advertisement is free. The promotion is free. It’s very widespread. It makes the grower stand out in the crowd, especially if they’re promoting all the varieties of AAS, so it’s a way to distinguish yourself from the massive growers.
There’s a wealth of information that comes from working with the other judges across the country. People have great depths of knowledge. There are many judges who have been involved for many years. Just being associated with them and going to the annual evaluation days and sharing the experience of what you had in your particular climate and seeing how others are growing is very beneficial. And it’s a way of staying in contact with many other breeding companies that are out there and being in tune with what’s coming down the pike. So it’s very beneficial to be associated with the judges in particular. |
Explore the May 2012 Issue
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