Service Sells

Randy and Lewis Sharp of Premier Growers in Buford, Ga., are focused on one thing — providing landscape contractors with the flowers they need, when they need them.

“We are a very seasonal business,” said Randy, who handles the production side. “We deal strictly with landscapers. When they’re done, we’re done.”

The company has two shipping seasons, each one lasting about three months. The brothers operate 10 acres of heated greenhouse space at three locations. They produce 250,000 flats of 1801s twice a year.

Production for the spring season begins around Feb. 1 with the propagation of unrooted cuttings. Shipping usually begins in mid-April and ends in June. Fall production begins in September with shipping starting the second week of October. Shipping continues into December to customers in Florida.

“We come to work seven days a week during the seasons,” Randy said. “We don’t do baskets, we don’t do color bowls and we don’t do jumbos. We don’t do garden centers, big-box stores or rewholesalers. We are strictly contractor-based.”

Sold on service
Randy said growing flowers is the easy part of Premier Growers’ business.

“The hardest thing in this business is service — taking care of the landscapers’ needs,” he said. “You have to be willing to have enough trucks and enough drivers. You have to be willing to answer your phone after 10 o’clock at night. We’ll do whatever we can because we know how short the seasons are.”

Working with landscapers is challenging when it comes to plant inventory. The majority of Premier’s crops are not pre-ordered.

“Lewis bases orders on what sold last year and what did well. He also considers new trends and new design concepts,” Randy said. “When you’re dealing with landscape contractors very few orders are booked. And even if they are booked, the delivery dates could change a week before delivery.”

Randy said while some growers gage a successful season by selling out of everything, a successful season for Premier is whether the company is able to deliver what its customers needed. “The sign of a successful landscape grower is order fulfillment from the start of the season until the end of the season,” Randy said.

The Sharps expect to throw out 10 percent of their crop because it is the nature of the business.

“Everyone thinks it’s a cardinal sin to throw away plants,” Randy said. “You have to look at the big picture. Are you going to save pennies by not replanting or are you going to lose dollars because you don’t have the plants available. The biggest compliment from our customers is when they say that we really get it. That we aren’t just a vendor selling them plants. That we are working with them from start to finish.”

Premier also offers its landscape customers replacement plants with year-round availability.

“They can’t have holes in their beds. They have to be able to maintain the beds all year,” Randy said. “We also have plants available for new square footage and property grand openings. It’s a minimal amount that we carry year-round.”

Branching out
Atlanta is a strong bedding plant area, Randy said.

“It’s ferocious in how much plant material it consumes. We have branched out into the Southeast because our customers based in Atlanta have branched out and asked us to supply them. Contractors will hear that we have started doing business in an area like central Florida and we’ll pick up three to four more customers that way.”

Lewis, who handles the sales side of the business, said the company’s top 10 customers buy about 60 percent of its product.

Started in 1987 in a leased greenhouse, Lewis said Premier Growers really didn’t take off until the 1996 Olympics came to Atlanta.

“That’s when the national landscape companies came to Atlanta,” Lewis said. “Before that, there were large companies here, but they only did business in metro-Atlanta. The Olympics brought companies from California, Maryland and New Jersey that set up branches here and remained here. Then ServiceMaster came in and bought large to mid-size metro-Atlanta landscapers who were our customers. These companies were put under the ServiceMaster umbrella. Fortunately for us, 90 percent of these landscapers were our customers already.”

The Sharps were able to survive the severe drought that impacted the metro-Atlanta area during 2007-2008 by expanding their customer base outside of the city.

“Our sales during the drought were down 15 percent,” Randy said. “We had started to develop the market outside the metro-Atlanta area three years prior to the drought, so we were well established. We really came to appreciate the necessity to diversify our customer base. Because we had spread our customer base out beyond the drought impact zone helped us tremendously.”

Randy said Premier’s philosophy is being a partner with its customers.

“We want our customers to be successful,” Randy said. “We call them and tell them how good the beds look. Our biggest selling point is not how our plants look coming off the back of our trucks, but how they look in the landscapes in August.”

Plant performance
Since Premier Growers only grows for landscapers, Randy and Lewis said their focus is how the plants perform once they get planted in the ground.

“The mentality for the garden center and big-box store is shelf life and bloom,” Randy said. “We care how the plants are going to look 12 weeks after we deliver them. If the plants don’t do well for the customer, they don’t do well for us.”

Metro-Atlanta is a two-season market. The beds need to look good for six months in the spring and six months in the fall. “Most of our other markets are also on a two-season rotation. Florida is a three-season rotation,” Randy said.

Since the plants have to perform well once they’re in the ground, no growth regulators are applied. “We actively grow the material,” Randy said. “We don’t hold back on the feed. We also harden off the plants before we ship them.”

One of the biggest changes the Sharps have seen is the demand for fall violas.

“It used to be where every landscaper would come in and ask for the big bloom pansies,” Randy said. “I told them they would get more flowers if they took the pansies with the medium-size flowers. Now the trend is moving to violas — small flowers, but 30-40 on a plant. It’s going away from flower size to how much color does a plant have.”

Previously, Premier did 70 percent pansies and 30 percent violas. Last year it was 50-50.

Prior to the severe drought that hit the Atlanta area, begonias were the bedding plant of choice for many landscapers.

“A lot of landscapers switched to the F1 hybrid vinca,” Lewis said. “Before the hybrid vinca were introduced, it wasn’t a very successful crop in the Atlanta market. Some of our top sellers for spring in addition to vinca are duranta, angelonia, lantana, Dragon Wing begonia and sun coleus.”

Randy said Atlanta is a very design-heavy city and that companies spend a lot of money on bed designs. “In the past, a bed might have one type of plant,” he said. “Now the same bed might have seven different items — different sizes, colors and textures. Landscape contractors rise and fall on their design work.

“The Atlanta landscape market has gotten so competitive that it comes down to seasonal color and turf color. Healthy flowers and turf can make or break a property,” Randy said. “A landscaper has to have both or you’re going to lose that property. Atlanta customers demand a lot from landscape contractors.”  


For more: Premier Growers, (770) 932-5234; www.premiergrowersinc.com.