City: Spencer, Mass.

Owner: Ed & Tina Bemis

Website: www.BemisFarmsNursery.com

Size: Retail - 4 acres, Growing - 2 acres, Other - 140 acres of farm

Years In Business: 63

Number Of Locations: 1

What changes have you made in the last 12 months to increase your garden center's profitability? We bought more carefully and precisely. Where we thought an ongoing supply was likely we were more apt to buy a little more tightly and then reorder.

We do not jump from vendor to vendor to save 2 cents. The relationship we have with our vendors has to be a two way street. If they are not profitable, they will not be around to supply us in the future. Some of our vendors did have surpluses that could benefit both us and them by purchasing at a discount. In some cases we used these as promotional items, in other cases we kept our regular price and were able to increase our margin.

We also raised some prices. Most perennials in #1 containers went up by one dollar.

We were even more careful to use surplus inventory in our ever-popular workshops, of which we teach about 200 each year. This allows us to sell down to the very last 5% of inventory, which is where all the profit is.

In addition to your sales staff, how do you communicate with customers in your store? Since virtually every couple has a cell phone between them and many have mobile internet access, in 2010 we are introducing a hotline for instore customers to call to hear recorded information from their cell phones. For example, a sign would say “Please dial 508-555-1212 and enter *442 to learn more about this plant and why we recommend it.” We are very excited about this new addition. It is a non threatening way to let the customer get the information fed to them, to engage them, and to help them to be successful with the plant. VOIP technology makes this easier to do than in the past. This will also be available on our web site.

Why is your garden center Revolutionary? There are a lot of individual elements that make us unique. We are situated among shady oaks and pines. We have an awesome guarantee. We host about 200 workshops each year for our customers, both on and off site. We have a lot of fun events for our customers’ families. We raise thousands of dollars each year for charitable purposes. We have a television program. We have cool and trendy displays. We have a Plantscape Express plant delivery, design, and placement program. But far more important than any one of these individual elements is how they all fit together. We truly want the customer to be successful! The customer being successful is what will continue to make us successful.

While this may not have been revolutionary when my dad started the garden center in 1947, it is revolutionary today. I cannot think of a single other business of which I am a customer that feels this the way we do. This is not to put down other businesses. Each one has their own style. But the customer being truly successful, feeling proud of what they have accomplished, and having had fun doing it, is our style. This is evidenced in our plant selection where we choose plants that will do well for the end consumer. Some of our vendors tell us we are missing the boat because we will not sell items that we feel will not do well for the customer. There are a ton of plants that look gorgeous in bloom, but will not reliably make it through our winters. There are lawn care products that are basically false hopes in a very pretty container, there are annuals which look lovely on the day of purchase but ten days later will peter out to nothing in the customer’s garden. We do not sell these things because we truly want the customer to be successful.

We strongly feel that our biggest competitor is failure. Kip Creel quantified this fabulously at the last IGC Show. To paraphrase him, if you do not get that homeowner to be successful within 18 to 24 months of starting, the entire industry has lost them as a customer for at least 12 to 24 months or much more. This is the biggest reason we have our own TV show. It is titled Bloomin’ with the Bemis’, but unofficially we call it Real Gardening for Real People. Some of the network “gardening” programs, while inspirational and fun, do not really address what real people do. Think back to Jim Crockett’s version of Victory garden, or more recently 30 Minute Meals with Rachael Ray. Real stuff for real people, not Iron Chef, not estate gardeners, but real stuff. We try to address the things our customers have questions on: showing how important fertilizing is, demonstrating how to water, or how to dig a hole. But we try to make it fun to watch. It is not scripted, just off the cuff. Like the talks at a conference, we have “medicine” segments, or ones that address a nuts and bolts issue like fertilizing or composting. And we have “candy” segments such as showing off brand new annuals for your garden. Interestingly the segment we probably received the most positive comments on was one on composting, so I guess we are doing something right. We have a few of the episodes on our web site and are adding more as the older segments are converted to appropriate formats.

Our Plantscape Express program was a logical extension of when we used to lay out the plants in an aisle for the customer. We would then jot down the names and positions and send them home with all the parts. Technology has allowed us to advance this process significantly. Digital cameras and email allows customers to download and fill out a questionnaire. Then they simply email both to us. We schedule a day and time. We show up with a bunch of plants on our truck. We place them right at the customer’s home. The customer doesn’t need to do any guessing, just the planting. The customer gets all the ingredients and the design expertise. It works exceptionally well for them. It also works for us as well, as we do not have to create a drawn out plan, or to make multiple visits to the house.

We have put our money where our mouth is on this with our guarantee. We guarantee plants to perform as they should: “a tree should grow and provide flowers or shade, a perennial should provide beauty for at least several years, an annual should grow and flower throughout the growing season.” We do not have a time limit on it. While it is not common, we just replaced a tree for a customer they originally purchased about ten years ago. Our customers are our future. They are valuable to us in many ways. They provide us with feedback about what has or hasn’t worked well for them, so that we may share that wisdom with others. They are valuable as friends. And they are valuable because they provide us, owners, staff, and vendors alike, with our livelihoods. To us, the value of that clearly exceeds the cost of a single tree.