Primed for retail sales

As Petitti Garden Centers has grown to nine retail locations in the Cleveland, Ohio area, the production side of the business has expanded to supply these stores.

Although the garden center business began in 1971 in Oakwood Village, Ohio, the production division didn’t get its start until 1991. The company began with 5-6 acres of Quonset houses located behind its original garden center.

The year after Petitti began producing its own plants, Wayne Cousins joined the company as head grower. Cousins, who has since added general manager to his title, said it didn’t take long for the retail side to sell out of what was being grown.

If the company was going to continue to expand, owner Angelo Petitti knew a larger production facility would be needed.

In October 1995, Petitti purchased a 40-acre property with 9.8 acres of glass greenhouses from Green Circle Growers in Columbia Station, Ohio. The facility, which was originally built in the 1970s as a greenhouse tomato range, was converted by Green Circle in 1985 to foliage plant production.

Cousins said the operation, which is called Casa Verde Growers, has been expanded to nearly 900,000 square feet of greenhouses. Many of the glass houses have been replaced with a variety of structures, including Van Wingerden, Ludy and Cravo structures.

Cousins said depending on the time of year, 85-95 percent of the plants produced by Casa Verde are sold through the Petitti retail outlets. The grower also sells its plants to florists, independent garden centers, landscapers and churches within a 200-mile radius.

Cousins remains optimistic even though landscaping has been down recently because of the recession and the drop off in construction, he expects this market to pick up as the economy rebounds.

“Although our landscaping sales were down 15 percent in 2009, that is small compared to other parts of the country that suffered declines of 25-40 percent,” he said. “The florist side of our sales is shrinking. The increased availability of flowers at grocery stores and other outlets has impacted florist sales.”

Better inventory control
Even though the Petitti retail outlets have been tracking hard good sales for about five years, it was not until this past March that the stores began to track plant sales using bar codes. Cousins said the Great Lakes Label system that Casa Verde has installed allows the company to track exactly what is being sold by variety.

“We’d been watching the development of equipment for about five years,” Cousins said. “This is the first system that we thought had the potential to work. Most of the time the equipment wasn’t fast enough.

“We bar code by variety and we also put a price on every single product. Even each pot size has its own bar code. We have over 1,000 different line items for perennials. We have even more on the annuals side. We now have a true record of exactly what we sold at what store.”

The Petitti stores use Retail Pro software to track both plant and hard good sales.

“Before we never had an accurate picture of exactly what we sold,” Cousins said. “Now that we are applying bar codes we can see which varieties are selling best and which ones are the dogs. This will enable us to better set our production numbers.”

He said a product sales history will need to be developed to get a more accurate read on production numbers.

“We think that determining production numbers will become simpler even though it rained much of this spring,” he said. We are also adding two stores. One store (formerly Eagle Creek Garden Center) in Bainbridge Township we took over ownership of on August 1 and the other will be opening around March 1 of next year. We think it will take about three years to develop a track history. For next year’s production we have come up with a percentage over what we sold this year along with the sales we are expecting from the two new stores.”

While the application of the bar codes should assist in tracking sales through retail, Casa Verde has also begun to use a SBI software inventory program for tracking production and shipping.

“Our stores are able to order off a live availability form,” Cousins said. “What we want to be able to do is to track the product being shipped to the stores by carts so that each store knows what’s on the carts it will be receiving. This will enable the store managers to call and tell us what should be on the next delivery they receive.”

Promoting the Petitti name
Another area where Casa Verde has been able to gain more control of its production is in the printing of tags and labels. The company maintains its own plant photo library along with the icons (planting location and care information) associated with commercially available tags. Annuals and perennials account for approximately 90 percent of the crops produced by Casa Verde.

“Owning the plant photos and information along with the label design enables us to better negotiate with the tag companies,” Cousins said. “We can go to any label manufacturer and tell them what we want. The reason we aren’t printing our own tags is because the label printers can do it cheaper. They also have the capability of tweaking the size and shape of the labels to accommodate what we want printed on them.”

Casa Verde is currently working with Australian label manufacturer Norwood Industries to print the majority of its labels and John Henry Co. for smaller orders. Cousins said that Norwood offers a special locking mechanism for keeping the tags in the pots.

All of the labels, including those for nursery plants, have the Petitti name on them.

“We’re putting the name on the labels to promote ourselves, Cousins said. “We’re trying to create a uniform look within the garden centers. Now it is consistent across all of our product lines, including the nursery side. They have the same icons and branding making it easier for our retail customers.”

Petitti also does its own in-house printing of signs that are used in its retail stores on a weekly basis.

“From a physical labor and time standpoint, creating the signs for nine retail stores is all we can handle right now,” Cousins said.

Biomass offers options
A Vyncke biomass boiler was brought online in March 2009.

Cousins said the company spends about $200,000 annually to heat with wood chips. When the company was burning natural gas, which is still used as a backup, the average annual heating fuel bill was around $700,000. Cousins said there is a higher input in regards to electricity for handling the wood chips. Payback for the boiler is expected to be five to six years.

“Optional fuels include anything that is burnable such as corn,” Cousins said. “After the equipment is paid for, if we wanted to upgrade the boiler to burn something else, we could add a scrubber to the system and look at alternative fuel sources.”  


For more: Casa Verde Growers, (440) 236-5055; www.cvgrowers.com