Q&A with John Rader

EuroAmerican Propagators in Bonsall, Calif., has long been at the forefront of developing floriculture trends. We spoke to owner John Rader about what EuroAmerican, a Proven Winners licensed grower, is doing to develop better plants for landscapers, garden centers, and different regional markets.
 

Q: What is your process for marketing and how it ties into plant development?

A: The marketing helps to sell the value. And then to be able to sell that value, that brings funds back into marketing. So it's a cycle.
 

Q: So you're not selling a commodity anymore?

A: Right. That's one of the problems. Sometimes in our industry, growers that grow beauty just think they're growing so much corn or so many tomatoes.

They don't realize that you don't just grow beauty. You guys are growing things that make people feel good about themselves. It's a lot bigger than just produce.

That's what attracted me to ornamentals – that little special beauty thing. I wasn't just growing something that people take for granted. It's something that people need more of in their lives.
 

Q: Landscape contractors often look at Proven Winners product and say, "Yeah, it looks great, but it costs me three times as much." How do you respond to that?

A: I love that one. I think a lot of contractors, a lot of installers, they go for the cheap seed stuff. I can see why. They have to pay so much for it. They really get some margin on it and still sell cheap.

But the problem is that you're having to change those out so quickly because so many seed varieties, once they go into flower and they have their big color show, because they are true annuals, they go to seed. And then they stop flowering.

And OK, are you going to deadhead them? Or are you going to switch out the bed? And usually the seed types are much slower growing than the Proven Winners types that you're propagating vegetatively. So you've got longevity. There's less switch outs. You have better performance. And you'll use less plants in an area because they grow so fast and they fill in.

So they may be three times [more expensive] per plant, but I promise you when you put them in the ground, you don't have to put them as close together. And they're going to last longer.

You've saved every single penny of that. Plus, because the quality of those is so distinctive and so unique and so amazing to people, it makes your customers more attracted to what you're doing.
 

Q: What new varieties can landscapers, growers and garden centers expect in the next five years?

A: I think plants will be focused to their regional use. I think we're going to see a lot of that going on. We've got to fine-tune what works where. And you need to identify what's a Proven Winner in the Deep South and what's a Proven Winner up in the northern climates?

And they all have different criteria, you know? For example, when you get in the South, their spring starts in February. They need a plant that blooms early. A lot of the plants that might be really good in the northern climate don't bloom early enough in the South. So I think we're going to see more regional plants.
 

Q: Looking ahead to 2012, what are some of the hot plant colors that you see taking the country by storm?

A: Blues will always be popular – the various shades of purple and blue. Anything with very bright colors will be popular. I think that it lifts people's spirits.

We're in a time right now where people need to have their spirits lifted. It's difficult economically, and economic hard times lead to other things. Being able to lift people's spirits with bright colors would be my answer to that.

Q: Do you have a production regime geared specifically for customers from Generation X or plant lines for someone who's very busy and doesn't want to put a lot of maintenance into it?

A: That's where the succulents come in. That's one of the biggest advances. You get so much variety, color and texture with succulents. They're just so cool.

And they're very versatile. They can come in the house. They can be outside. One of the best things is that people do a lot of travelling for business these days. And this is a plant that you can leave, and it's really happy that you left it because you've stopped watering it.

In fact, some succulents have their best color show when they're a little bit water deprived. So I think succulents are Gen X.

Then I think that people want perennials. Perennials are going to increase in their value because people want something that they don't have to replant every single year.
 

Q: When you think about EuroAmerican and its business, what are some of the key issues that you dealing with?

A: Being able to continuously come out with new products and find a way to facilitate getting them to the market. What we've learned that is important is that as we introduce new products, we can have the new plant.

But we have so many product offerings, how do we give it the amount of focus and attention, and spotlight it adequately, so that the growers try it?

As we develop all these millions of plants, how do we get the word out to everybody? Now that a lot of people have gotten into the same kind of plants that we started out with, there are a lot of confusing messages.
 

Q: What are you doing in the next three to five years for the landscape customer that you haven't done before?

A: One thing is the 70-millimeter Ellepot. That's addressing a need that landscapers have where there isn't as much plastic to haul away from a job site.

That's one of the things we heard as we started doing surveys [of landscapers] and asking,

'What do you need from us? What would be helpful?'

One of the biggest things was, 'Decrease the amount of trash we have to haul away from the site.'

That's one of the initiatives that we addressed right off the bat. This Ellepot is going to help. They can grow a whole tray of plants in California – the tray of choice is the 17 by 17 – and you can get as many as 25 70-millimeter Ellepots in one flat. You only have one label. That's the only plastic. Then the flat itself is recyclable. They can use it again, bring it back, that kind of thing.

The other one is we identified this huge gap between landscape architects, installers and contractors. We're trying to get them all together and use the brand as the unifier for all of them, so they recognize, 'Hey, great plants for the landscape – the brand Proven Winners.'

We've worked hard at using the brand to unify the different segments. It's a fragmented industry. You have municipalities that do their own thing. Then you've got contractors, installers, maintenance people, architects.

When we were doing our surveys, one architect said, 'I've never seen a landscape planned or drawn with a plan for color. It's always been the trees, the shrubs, the skeleton plants.'

The color was just sort of left to the whim of whoever was installing it or whoever owned the property.

Let's tell them what to put in here for color. Let's talk their language and say, 'OK, you don't have to plant as many. You don't have to sweep out as often and replant. These grow fast.' We're trying to address color. It's a gap.
 

Q: When you say gap, you mean a gap between whom?

A: The grower and the contractor. The gap is showing them how many good plants that we have that really ought to be in the landscape.

There's really no guidance given by color people to landscapers as to what would work where, and what the opportunities are to make them look good in the eyes of their customers.

That's where we're closing the gap, teaching them about plant materials that they didn't know anything about before.

Q: What else is important regarding landscape/grower/retailer relationships?

A: In a lot of respects, Proven Winners right now is at a really opportune point. So much of the industry is only worrying about going inexpensive, cheapening their inputs. They're not branding. So it's a huge opportunity to build the brand even stronger and to create the value message.

We've got to diverge ourselves from what the industry seems to be wanting to do. A perfect example of it is a category called premium color. In the old days, premium color was Proven Winners. Now, there's so many other suppliers that have similar items that are premium color. That category has become generic. It has become a kitchen sink of all these different genetics.

When you get to this point, Proven Winners now has this great opportunity to be distinct even from premium color because you see price even falling on premium color. Proven Winners, by using the value of the brand and always trying to stay ahead on the genetics, can distance itself and become its own category. 'OK, there's Proven Winners, and then there's premium color.'

For more: www.pweuro.com