Market to women with POP

Many larger trees and shrubs are purchased like stoves or refrigerators. This is a given. Once their performance starts to decline or a freak of nature happens, you need to replace them.

Customers who have new homes often choose many trees and shrubs with a strict budget in mind. However, in a down economy people stay home and decorate. They do not have the money to travel, so they entertain at home. Hopefully they look around the yard and say, “This place needs a facelift!”

When these consumers hit the stores, what grabs their attention? A few great programs in the horticulture industry have come along with excellent marketing behind them. These have made sure that many retailers make more money by catching female consumers’ attention.

One such program is for Bailey Nurseries’ Endless Summer hydrangea. It incorporates great POP, a blue pot and a large tag. Women can’t walk by these displays without taking a long look at the flowers.

Perennial programs

So, how about your perennials? For many of you, perennials have been a goldmine for the past five to 10 years. Just like grocery-store customers who stop in on a weekly to biweekly basis, shoppers keep coming back to see what’s in flower this week.

Want to make more margin? These days we are seeing more packaging and merchandising coming to our marketplace just like every other retail outlet. We are just now catching up, and consumers are biting.

Van Bloem has a beautiful merchandising program that females will be attracted to. In the sea of black pots, this program will have customers bee-lining to it. For this program, graphically pleasing pots have matching tags and interesting signage to create a total merchandising package. This new package could be sold at a higher margin than the individual parts.

Put the right info in the right place

Some people think printed pots don’t work. I believe that most of the printed pots in our marketplace are picturing the plants already in flower and that they have way too much information on them. This is just wasted real estate.

I’m all about a good message, but what would Target do? I’m sure Target’s pots would have fun, eye-appealing graphics that a woman couldn’t resist. The information would be clean and simple and placed on a tag or card.

Picturing perennials is a good thing, especially if they are not in flower. Picturing annuals on tags and pots when they are in flower (which 99.9 percent are when they’re on the retail shelves) is wasted real estate, in my book.

Use plants as gifts

I’ve hosted many focus groups, and being a woman myself, I’ve learned that our customers are predominately female homeowners. Let me emphasize that they are homeowners, not gardeners.

They get excited over the silliest things and can’t resist many inspiring items at retail. Do you want her to pick your plants or someone else’s plants? Do you want her in the garden center in seasons other than springtime?

Package your plants as gifts. She is dying to give something to a hostess besides a bottle of wine. Plants make terrific gifts, especially when packaged like one. Many successful companies spend a lot of dollars and research on packaging and merchandising to win her over. Are you spending any?

- Brenda Vaughn

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Brenda Vaughn is marketing manager, John Henry Co., (517) 703-1524; brenda.vaughn@multipkg.com; www.jhc.com.

April 2008