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RETAIL / 07
GROWING PA I N S Independent retail consultant, Liam Kelly asks if the time is right for a code of practice for Irish growers
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’ve had a somewhat turbulent relationship with certain Irish plant growers. That association began benignly enough back in the late 80s when I had my first introduction to them and what they do, but as I took over purchasing as part of my job and began to buy from them I became more and more frustrated at how many weren’t moving at the same pace as garden centres, who were just starting to operate as proper retailers. Many nurseries back then had a nostalgic view of what it meant to be a grower and were living in the world of, ‘But we’ve always done it that way…’ As a buyer my frustration with them meant that I had more than one altercation with various nurseries during that career and ended up distancing myself from many, while focussing on those who evolved with retailers from a product, logistics and marketing point of view. Some of these decisions were quite tough, as the people involved in these nurseries weren’t bad people and oftentimes their actual products were good but some part of the process from purchasing to delivery would repeatedly go awry, standards would drop and they would be delisted from an ever decreasing group of my preferred suppliers. Up until relatively recently, standard practice among many nurseries was to grow plants they hoped their customer – in their mind the garden centre - would like to buy, but this was flawed reasoning of course, as the client they needed to please was one step further along the buying chain, the one who purchased that plant from the retailer - the ever knowledge-regressive garden centre customer. It’s worth pointing out again that not all were stuck in the past, many did change and began to supply what was needed by doing the reverse of what was then normal. They began each season by visiting garden centres and asking them what their customers wanted, how ordering could be made easier and how they could sell more product, to everyone’s benefit. Nowadays, my work brings me into indirect – and often direct - contact with nurseries as part of the work I do with many retailers, from purchasing advice to the process of receiving in goods, and on through merchandising and selling, I am still very much hands-on and aware of the CC trolleys of plants arriving from various nurseries from around the island and beyond. And the frustrating thing for me is seeing the same issues
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that irritated me 10 or more years ago are still there among certain growers, and it’s making them in huge danger of becoming extinct as the mechanics of progress-favouring evolution mean that those who are stronger, better and faster will drive those vexing growers to being a forgotten listing in a dusty old tradeshow catalogue or a dog-eared ‘Looking Good’ list in the back of a filing cabinet. So what’s the problem with these endangered growers? Well, there are quite a few issues but they can be broken down into the oversimplified areas of ordering logistics, plant quality and product marketing.
CONVENIENCE Ordering stock should be the simplest of processes at this point, given how tech-bloated we are, and webshops should be becoming the norm for growers, where the garden centre plant buyer can see the actual product being offered and just needs to insert a retail price and a quantity and press ‘buy’. They should be able to keep an eye on the purchase value and trolley count and then download the barcode information for inputting as a purchase order on the garden centres EPOS system, with the delivery arriving in a short few days. At the moment many nurseries do not make it this easy, convenient or time-saving to create orders, and these are the growers who may be left behind as garden centres consolidate the number of nurseries/suppliers they deal with based on the above mentioned convenience and speed of ordering. Those efficient suppliers will then increase their ranges to fill gaps required by garden centres and drive their competitors even further out of the market. This is not some future issue to worry about by the way; it is happening right now. A purchaser-friendly spreadsheet is a minimum requirement these days, but it needs to be easy to understand, easy to complete and have fast-loading photos of the actual stock that will be supplied to the retailer including the colour label, coloured pot, etc. Admittedly, webshops and the technology required need an investment in time and money but that’s perhaps where collective software buying, training and sharing of information amongst groups of growers should be focussed, with the help of funding from government bodies and consultation with plant buyers within garden centres, and other experts.
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticultureconnected.ie / Summer 2018
