Open Register

Laughing matters

OK, I’ve had it with the Brothers Oom – old “GL” and “D” and all their negative reports on the economy. So we’re taking “the other path” in the fork in the road today and joining two elderly ladies ...

… who were sitting on a park bench outside the local town hall where a flower show was in progress. One leaned over and said, “Life is so boring. We never have any fun anymore. For $5 I’d take my clothes off right now and streak through that stupid flower show!”

“You’re on!,” said her friend, holding up a $5 bill.
 
As fast as she could, the first little old lady fumbled her way out of her clothes before bolting through the front door of the flower show in a full-naked streak. Waiting outside, her friend soon heard a huge commotion inside the hall, followed by loud applause. The naked lady burst out through the door surrounded by a cheering crowd.

“What happened?” asked her waiting friend. “Apparently,” said the first lady, “I won first prize for ‘Best Dried Arrangement.’”

This joke is part of the collection of happy/silly/inspirational garden-related thoughts brought to you by David Hobson’s Garden Humour Web site. If you, like I, need a reason to smile these days, then you might want to do the point/click thing here.

It sure beats doing the point/click thing here.

-- Yale

To flee or not to flee, that is the question

In a perfect world, you would not be reading me; you would be reading about me. What you would read is that I was the first inductee into three sports halls of fame — representing the most noteworthy athletes who competed in football, basketball and baseball.

What you would read would mention that my feat not only was unprecedented; it was highly unlikely, given that I never topped 5 feet, 10 inches in height, never weighed more than 150 pounds in my prime, never ran faster than a 5.0 in the 40-yard dash — but actually DID touch the basketball rim once, in college. Yeah, the short, skinny, slow kid had him some hops.

Actually, I wasn’t a terrible athlete, back in the day. I just wasn’t a very good player. How could both be true? It’s simple: I was afraid to fail. Consequently, I rarely succeeded, at least to the point that I gave my coaches pause to reconsider why they should let the short, skinny, slow kid with some hops have more playing time.

Looking back, that is one of my few regrets in life, the failure to get over the fear of failure hump. Eventually, when I matured, I became something of a prolific player, if being one of the better players on a 45-and-older softball team can qualify in any fashion as prolific. The difference between now and then is easily discerned: I simply don’t worry about not succeeding.

I recently read a blog post about this very subject, specifically as it pertains to business success and failure. Did you know that the average self-made millionaire files for bankruptcy, or comes close to filing for bankruptcy 3.2 times in his life?

And I bet he never even touched the basketball rim.

-- Yale

Succession planning eases Bachman's burden

Few family businesses are comfortable creating a transition policy to use upon its current owner's death. By creating a succession plan a generation ago that clearly outlined how leadership would pass from one generation to the next, Bachman's is running smoothly even as its leaders and staff grieve for Todd Bachman, the Minneapolis Post reported. One part of that planning is a now-five person management team that represents all divisions of the company and that meets regularly. The Minn. Post interviewed several business transition experts for its article who were complimentary of Bachman's organization.

Urban Outfitters’ retail visionary at his best when charting new Terrain

PHILADELPHIA -- Whenever I’m on the road, I enjoy hitting the newsstand to pick up the local city magazine. One of the best is Philadelphia Magazine. In town this week for the Perennial Plant Association’s 26th annual symposium, I was pleasantly surprised to see Philadelphia Magazine’s July issue carries a lengthy profile of Dick Hayne, the guy behind the newly opened Terrain at Styer’s, along with Urban Outfitters (132 stores), Anthropologie (113) and Free People (19).

Here are some take-home points from the article:

• When Hayne wryly describes his job as “the business of pleasing women,” he’s kind of joshing, but he’s also quite serious. For 38 years, Hayne has made a career out of quietly observing and ingeniously responding to the needs of the country’s most influential shopper: the affluent upper-middle-class woman.
• At first, he observed women his age, women in his social circle. As he grew older, when he and the women in his life no longer fit the demographic, he did it by hiring new women -- and men -- who fit and understood his customers’ profiles.
• With his new title of president and chairman, Hayne is in big-picture mode, looking for new concepts like Terrain, which has a simple premise: Attract the Mercedes Benz-driving women, show them a lifestyle they identify with, keep them wandering for an hour, maybe two, and watch sales go through the greenhouse roof.
• Out-of-the-box locations make his customer feel like she is experiencing something unique. “It’s kind of a labyrinth,” one analyst said. “You keep walking through, delighted by each turn. … You feel like you’re discovering little things.”
• When he’s not cultivating his retail, Hayne is trying to cultivate his tomato plants. “One of the most wonderful parts of gardening is, if you came to my house and you saw a certain plant, and you said, ‘Where did you get that?,’ I’d actually want to tell you,” he says. But you’d definitely have to ask. “I can’t toot my own horn like that.”

Believe me, tongues are wagging at the PPA symposium over Terrain. I’m going to take a drive out to Chadds Ford later this week to have a firsthand look. I’ll be sure to pass along some photos and my thoughts on the place.

-- Kevin

GreenBeam.com upgrades to GreenBeamPro.com

GreenBeam.com has changed its location and its name. The new GreenBeamPro.com is even deeper, wider and more accessible than ever, completely redesigned with you in mind. Besides a new story every day, you’ll find the most recent postings from our blogs and our daily news. Search past articles. Refer to past e-newsletters. Find products. Hurry on over to GreenBeamPro.Com and see what’s new.

-- Sarah

A pumpkin by any other name

Two things to know about me: I love puns of all sorts, and I love Halloween. Being a Halloween connoisseur, I delight in finding out new things about my favorite holiday. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a site dedicated to teaching kids how to grow pumpkins from seeds. Even better, they list all sorts of nifty pumpkin names that tickled my funny bone.

There seems to be a plethora of Jacks in Halloween pumpkins way beyond Jack-O-Lantern. Just to drop a few names, there is Jumpin’ Jack, Jack of All Trades, Jackpot, Jack-B-Little, followed (swiftly, I’m sure) by Jack-B-Quick. Digging deeper, I found it just got better and better! Spooktacular, Casper, Baby Boo, Munchkin, Ghost Rider.

You can tell I’ve got some serious investigative pumpkin purchasing to do for our annual Halloween carve fest!

 

By the way, did I tell you the one about the three-legged dog who walked into a bar? He was looking for the man who shot his paw.

-- Jennifer

Some magazines get cars to test drive

From time to time, a box will arrive unexpectedly here at Garden Center headquarters. These shipments provide a welcome diversion on an otherwise routine day in the office. The source of these shipments? Kind-hearted vendors who have been thoughtful enough to send us samples so we can share in the joy of their latest introductions. Or maybe they just want free press.

It’s entertaining to watch the staff paw through the box to see what kind of booty has arrived. Reminds me of my brothers and me tearing through a new box of breakfast cereal to find the cheapo prize at the bottom.

Of course, a favorite for most of us are the plant samplers. Breeders from time to time send nice selections of new varieties in hopes that our staff will plant them and be impressed enough by the plants’ performance to write a favorable article. Several colleagues have nicely outfitted their landscapes thanks to these charity shipments.

Not all shipments are winners, however.

Sadly, this spring one large box of plants was misdirected to an unair-conditioned storage room, where it sat for three weeks before being noticed. Even SUPERthrive could not revive those crispy plant samples.

Humbug to the poinsettia supplier that sent whitefly-infested plants one year.

We finally tossed out the pet memorial stone embossed with DUKE, A LOYAL FRIEND, 1990-2002. If one of us had had a dog so named who lived during that era, it would have been a fine gimme.

___________

Speaking of swag, Open Register will give one lucky reader a copy of “Loves Me, Loves Me Not: The Hidden Language of Flowers,” a new book from Cool Springs Press. For a chance to win, all you have to do is click Comments below, then type in your name and e-mail address. There are no tricky trivia questions to answer. No salesmen will call.

-- Kevin

Do as I say — and, maybe, even, as I do!

Several years ago, during a meeting designed to boost morale/camaraderie at the home office, one of my bosses handed out a framed certificate to each employee. Every “trophy” was personalized, a sort of light-hearted thank you note that cited a unique contribution each employee had made during the year.  I received the “I have to say …” award, which was appropriate on two fronts:

First, I DO have to say … or, at least, I DO like to say.  On practically every performance appraisal during my professional career I have received a check in the box marked, “Talks Too Much.”

Apparently, I really talk too much about my magazine. As my boss pointed out at the “awards ceremony, after every issue of GCP&S is printed, I apparently feel compelled to declare, “I have to say that this is the best issue of the magazine that we have ever done.”

While that probably isn’t true/possible (the “best yet” thing), I offer no apologies for the sentiment. And neither should you, if your goal is to make this selling season better than the last — and the next even better than this one. Good garden center operators always strive to improve, and good garden centers reflect the effort.

To that end, I would suggest that you check out a gardening-related Web site, About: gardening, that will make you smarter just for reading it. You’ll be smarter still if you print the various tips and offer them at various spots in the store for your customers to take home with them.

You’ll be EVEN smarter still if you link them to your own Web site so that people looking for gardening tips will look to you as the source.

I would go on about how smart you’ll be, but the latest edition of GCP&S just landed in my mailbox this morning, and I hear a calling to let my colleagues know what I think about it.

— Yale

A different type of customer service

I’ve found a book to add to my to-be-read pile. “The New Pioneers” by Wall Street Journal’s Thomas Petzinger takes a look at how several companies transformed themselves into better, more effective businesses.

I stumbled across the book when reading a “Fast Company” article based on the book. The article examined how Cemex, a Mexican cement company, went from a the-customer-must-conform-to-us operation to a customer-focused company.

Cement spoils after 90 minutes in the truck, and that’s a major problem when you show up to a building site on time and the crew isn’t ready for you. In response, the company turned to punitive fines and demanded customer compliance with company rules.

Then Cemex’s execs visited FedEx in Memphis and a 911 center in Houston and were amazed at the high level of coordination and efficiency. Cemex decided to internally streamline itself and dramatically changed their customer satisfaction rate and its profitability.

In contrast, garden centers tend to focus almost exclusively on the employees’ interaction with shoppers to improve customer satisfaction.

Customers are simple creatures, no matter how complicated the personality. They want enough healthy product to make a choice from, but not so much that they’re overwhelmed. Then they want to check out quickly and leave.

Maybe it’s time to look at internal systems and traffic flow at garden centers. When does product arrive? Where and when is it cared for? How is it restocked? How often is it restocked? How crowded are the aisles, are the carts easy to maneuver?

But a balance must be struck. It seems that the garden centers that are best at efficiency are also sterile. Is there a way to combine a garden center that warmly welcomes customers and be efficient?

-Carol