Applying a Brand Perspective in the Lawn and Garden Industry

Creating Water Gardening Displays that Fuel Inspiration

The focus on today’s marketing is becoming more relevant to your customers’ lives. To stay primed for growth and market success, make yourself more important to your customers and become a fabric of their lives. Everything in your store – from product offerings to staff attitudes and behavior – should strive for customer happiness. Know your customer intimately so you can know their needs, apprehensions and motivations to purchase. Create the ideal shopping environment to get them excited and net an additional 5% in impulse buys sales per year. Creative displays that emotionally connect with your customers increase impulse sales, impacting profitability. 

“We’ve become a destination shop where people come just to sit and enjoy the atmosphere,” said David Robinson, founding co-owner, Atlanta Water Gardens, Inc., Atlanta, GA. 

“Everywhere you turn, you hear water moving – spraying fountains, rushing waterfalls, trickling spitters. We have about 200 fountains and water features running inside. It’s so loud in that room that we have to turn at least half of the fountains off just to have staff meetings. Customers say it’s the ‘most unbelievable place’ they’ve experienced. Their jaws drop in awe when they walk in,” said Robinson. The greenhouse features five large (above-ground) ponds in a well-planted, controlled tropical environment where ferns and philodendrons climb the walls; some plants on display have leaves measuring one to three feet long. This “jungle environment” gives people an idea of what mature foliage will look like in and around the ponds.

Whet their appetites with inspirational displays that establish an emotional connection, reinforcing the experience only you can create for them. Appealing to the senses is an extremely powerful way to build long term customer relationships and in building your unique brand. Stimulating the five senses is a powerful way to differentiate yourself from the competition. 

“You’re selling the effect of the pond. You’re selling the sight and sound of water and what it can do for people,” said Robinson. Playing to their imagination and thinking beyond the realm of selling products gives people a new outlook on ways to enhance their lives and create beauty around them, achieving a better quality of life. 

“If displays are not running, they’re not going to sell. The average customer can not imagine what the fountains will look like once they are set up with running water,” said Robinson. Stimulate customers’ creative juices and show them how ponds and water features enhance any space. 

Creative displays showcase not only the products, but give decorative ideas that uncover untraditional ways to use the products. Displays with water capture the senses and attract customers, giving you the opportunity to place products strategically.

Creating Dynamic Displays

“The best feedback we get is when a customer buys an entire display or all the materials to replicate it at home,” said Becky Faller, merchandising design specialist, Riverview Nursery, Temple, PA.

As the focus on customers’ lifestyle increases, so do the ways retailers use visual merchandising. According to a 2005 Industry Survey of Visual Merchandising for Display and Design Ideas, among top trends are using a lot of color, clean lines and less clutter, sustainability, customer-centric store environments, simplicity and more theme-oriented promotions.

Translate these trends to water gardening. “We created an environment (indoors) where we can do it year round,” said Robinson. “We help people visualize ways to use water in their gardens.”

Utilize what makes you different in your displays. Atlanta Water Gardens, for example, buys from all over the world, making a conscious effort to be unique with some of the exotic items it carries like hand-carved volcanic stone lanterns from Bali and limestone pedestals and urns from Indonesia. Construct displays that combine the exotic with the everyday, helping customers re-invent their landscape. 

Riverview Nursery and Landscape Center arranges items by similar function and colors. “Our aquatic plants are decoratively grouped: winter hardy plants, cattails, water irises, etc. We create a central display showing how they can work together. It makes shopping easier for customers who don’t visualize it,” said Seth Hand, manager, Riverview Nursery.

Combining varying textures, hues of color, shapes and sizes creates interesting displays. Changing colors with the season is an excellent way to maintain constant change and create dramatic moods. 

Utilizing Every Display Opportunity

Every area customers see has the potential to maximize (or minimize) their experience. Customers come across plenty of stacks, racks, piles and aisles. Break it up. Create an “experience,” even if it’s just one small area of your store. If space allows, make multiple environments, themed product areas, or displays that replicate outdoor settings featuring a coordinated selection of products. 

“Our entire greenhouse acts as a display,” said Hand. “It attracts customers with the sight and sound of moving water from the water features we have by the doors and the Koi pond filling one of its rooms. Customers enjoy exploring our outdoor ponds as well –home to nearly 40 fish.” In addition to its ponds, Riverview Nursery has an entire room that showcases tropical fish using wall to wall aquariums. The only lighting in the dark room is generated solely by the aquariums, making an exquisite underwater universe.

Appeal to the lifestyles of your target customers by using high resolution photography that focuses more on the quality of life you bring (rather than concentrating only on product signage). Some manufacturers have co-op programs to support these types of branding initiatives as they work to promote the water gardening category. 

To pique their intellectual side, consider incorporating an idea center featuring how-to books and inspirational magazines. Lawn and garden hobbyists are always on the watch for new information and products. Be sure this area is clearly identified and near the checkout area. Customers are likely to grab a little inspirational reading on the way out.

Planning and Concepting the Display

Since American lawn and garden hobbyists spend about $40 billion a year, nursery retailers have quite an advantage. Engage shoppers with sensory effects like soothing music, fragrant smells of flowers and candles, and moving water in container gardens or full scale ponds if you have the space. Use Koi and goldfish to bring the ponds to life.

Collecting ideas from trade shows and incorporating the best ones suited for your customers will help you stay innovative. Trade shows provide a full spectrum of inventive displays, new products and plant varieties, and novel programs and technologies to employ to enhance your customers’ shopping experience. Just as trade shows are magnificent idea centers for retailers, successful merchandisers can ignite the same energy to create a thrilling experience for their customers. 

“We get a ton of ideas from our trade shows, and look for ways to incorporate novelty into what we already have so our displays are fresh and catch the interest of even our regular shoppers,” said Faller.

Atlanta Water Gardens shows its charm through the non-traditional ways it houses products, as opposed to using typical retail shelving. They stack pond chemicals inside an open armoire or aquatic plants on a baker’s rack, giving an “antique shop feel.”

Keeping Displays Maintained and Refreshed 

While the daily upkeep may not be as fun, it is arguably the most necessary. Riverview Nursery advises making the time each day to deadhead aquatic plants, keep pond water clean and clear, and care for the fish. An unkempt display is a turn-off, and can be a deterrent to water gardening or fish keeping if it looks like too much work to bother.

Refreshing the display is critical. “Our displays are constantly changing,” said Faller. To attract customer attention and pique the interest of regular visitors, Riverview Nursery changes displays weekly and features products that run in fliers or newspaper ads. Also group merchandise together like a store within a store, which disperses impulse items among demand items. It invites customers to browse and explore each item. 

Cross selling products is an opportunity to leverage resources like space and products while making an inviting atmosphere. Additionally, you’ll increase impulse buys as you help customers to see other products that will complement their purchase. 

“Keep it fresh, keep it lively, and change it often,” Robinson advises.

Investing Manufacturing Help

Retailers and manufacturers alike are investing resources to ensure what they do is timely and relevant with the needs and desires of lawn and garden enthusiasts. Never has it been so important for today’s retailers to translate business strategies into inspirational displays that help create an experience for customers.

Maximize your resources, using the tools and relationships you have with manufacturers that want to enhance pleasant shopping experiences for consumers. Merchandising materials and takeaways, for instance, can help you create a branded experience for top-sellers in your store. Signage with inspirational photography shows off quality plants but also gives you credibility if they are associated with high end brands.

Whether your goal is to inspire, educate or innovate, look for ways your industry partners can help you deliver it consistently to achieve the ultimate experience you intend for customers. Riverview Nursery prides itself on its knowledgeable expertise so having display racks that organize products nicely and incorporate necessary literature is a testament to their brand. “Before our recent expansion, we were packed floor to ceiling without an inch to spare. We made the most of every corner, using spinner racks packed with books and magazines for our customers,” said Hand. 

Now with a show room, Riverview Nursery has the space to incorporate larger displays to make a greater presence for products and the appropriate information customers need for educated purchasing decisions. “We keep hand-outs with our pond displays to provide how-to information. (For instance) in the fall, we’ll have a winter prep display that has all of the products they need, like pond de-icers and wheat germ food, and instructions on how to winterize the pond for customers to reference or take home with them,” said Hand. 

Informative signage educates and prompts questions. Utilize materials your manufacturers can provide like P-O-P that highlights product features and benefits or brochures that show how to install a pond. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there – we want customers to understand what they are buying and spend time consulting our knowledgeable staff.”

Another captivating display at Riverview Nursery is one made by and for the customers. It’s the brag board for customers to show off their ponds and inspire ideas.

Growing Happy Customers 

Striking emotional chords through inspirational displays that enhance your brand garners powerful results. Visually pleasing displays and well-merchandised stores can add up to significant sales – not to mention valuable customer loyalty. Stay inventive to inspire customers and make their shopping fun. They will take pride in shopping with you and in the transformations you help them make to their homes and lifestyles.