May 2023 - 36

MANAGEMENT
customer appreciation days, improved facilities, better
products, focused marketing and associate training provided
the new evolution of the IGC.
Five-star service standards, attraction and retention of top
talent, core values, the great game of business, teamwork,
financial literacy, leadership development, and employee
engagement also became the " new now " of building your
world-class service team - and continues even today.
One by one, IGCs, growers, nurseries, and landscape
professionals began to adapt and change to what many
others had been doing for a while - competing on
experience and not on price! And then COVID came.
Innovation at the Speed of COVID
The industry was forced to innovate. Curbside pickup,
touchless technology (QR codes), e-commerce and online
ordering all became par for the course as a " change by crisis "
model of innovation emerged.
However, many industries outside of the green industry
had already adopted these methods many years before.
The Cheesecake Factory embraced curbside pickup over
a decade ago. Starbucks and Chick-fil-A have had mobile
ordering for years, and Amazon has dominated the online
ordering space for quite some time now.
Even the trucking and shipping industries standardized
containers where every ship and every truck could carry
the exact same-sized container. It was an international,
industry-wide endeavor that revolutionized both freight
and efficiency decades ago.
They were either innovators, early adopters or the early
majority, and those methods of engaging their customers
and capturing market share and revenue have brought us
into the third economy: " the convenience economy. "
Uber, Instacart, Grubhub, mobile apps and online
ordering are now front and center in consumers' minds
and are quickly becoming the basic expectations of your
IGC and green business.
So again, we are at a point of inflection in our industry. Do
we continue to be the late majority to this new convenience
economy, or do we adapt to the new accelerated pace of
change? Only you can decide - or maybe your customers
will decide for you. Either way, it's happening sooner or later.
Thinking Outside Store Limits
Enter the concept of sales beyond the brick and mortar,
where you are able to quickly adapt, meet your customers
and employees at their level of engagement, and become the
3% innovators or 13% early adopters and lead the industry
into the future where the blend of price, experience and
convenience drives a compelling value proposition.
The Garden Center Group Fall Event in 2021 introduced
Your GroupSpace, an internal intranet platform providing
digital solutions to the day-to-day operations of busy IGCs in
North America.
From human resources and operations to training and
team communication and engagement, the platform has
simplified the workplace, saved hours a week in manual
activities, and has become the sole location for operational
excellence and organizational efficiencies to early adopters
36 | LAWN & GARDEN RETAILER | MAY 2023
Dutch Growers' " A Touch of Dutch " program
sends a curated gift box of items sent to
subscribers each month.
of this innovative solution. (Currently more than 25 IGCs are
using www.yourgroupspace.com.)
Proven Winners is an early adopter and partner in
the effort to educate and inform IGCs about effective
marketing, horticulture knowledge and brand
awareness - all inside Your GroupSpace. Jessica
DeGraaf and her talented team are leading the way into
the future of connecting the consumer, the IGC, and the
grower through the supply and demand chain.
An emerging industry leader originally from outside of the
IGC space, Ben Pecnik, vice president of Louisiana Nursery in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and his team have embraced Your
GroupSpace and are now combining both the experience
and convenience economies. They adopted the " Garden on
the Geaux " app and are committed to saying " yes " to every
customer inquiry.
This affords the plant pros to drive sales opportunities
into either comparable substitutions or special orders from
growers. A simple " Just Say Yes! " culture has been created to
capture every dollar and every delivery. Geaux Team Geaux!
Saying " no " adds up to scores of thousands of dollars of
unrealized revenue that you can never get back, as well as
your customers going to your competition to see if they will
say " yes! " (Spoiler: They probably will!)
From this customized intranet platform, IGCs can now
be connected to their growers and vendors to facilitate the
process of online/e-commerce ordering from the innovators
and early adopters of this concept.
One of those innovators is Everde Growers. Pecnik and
his buying team can digitally connect to David Kirby, Everde
Growers' executive vice president, and his sales team led
by Meredith McLeod to not only place special orders for
rooted material that are not currently on property, but can
also have the " endless aisle " concept and have consumers
order online through their e-commerce platform and have
it delivered to one of their three garden center locations on
the next delivery.
" Our customers are increasingly migrating to the use of
technology and have definitely entered the convenience
economy, " Kirby says. " Providing a solution for them to do
their ordering and communicating with our team 24/7 is a
great value proposition for Everde Growers.
" This becomes a game-changer for a revenue stream
beyond the brick and mortar and will afford a chance for
growers and nurseries to have another pipeline to move their
inventory beyond the normal channels of the last 50 years. "
http://www.yourgroupspace.com
May 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May 2023
