From customer service to retailers’ top picks to predictions for 2023, see what the industry is talking about.

We hit the road to Columbus, Ohio, again this year for Cultivate’22 to bring you the latest news from one of the industry’s biggest trade shows. You can read up on some of our coverage below, and be sure to visit bit.ly/CultivatingKnowledge for more.

It’s a well-known fact that it’s a bigger investment to recruit a new customer than it is to retain an existing one, so how do you turn a first-time buyer into a loyal customer?

People often act on autopilot, said Dr. Bridget Behe, professor of horticultural marketing at the University of Michigan, at her session “First-time Buyers to Loyal Customers.” It takes more cognitive energy to make a change and go to a different retailer than it does to return to a store you know.

"So you have to stop thinking about a transaction as a one-time sale and start thinking about it as a relationship,” Behe said. And once you build the relationship and trust, an indirect benefit is the capacity to make recommendations on plants and placement, which increases their chances of success.

Loyal buyers buy repeatedly, but not because there aren’t other choices and not because you are the easiest choice, conserving them time and energy. “A loyal customer buys repeatedly but we need to get into the psyche of the consumer to understand that,” Behe said.

There are plenty of choices out there for consumers, but the key to repeat customers isn’t just making them happy — it’s going a step further to make them delighted. That can be done through anything from signage to new products to freebies. “Happy customers are satisfied but delighted people are likely to make the purchase again,” Behe said. “Yes, we need satisfied customers, but what we see in the literature is that we need that combination of delight and joy to have loyal customers.”

Emotions like delight, and its opposite, regret, can create intense reactions. And when a transaction leaves a customer with a feeling of regret, they’re likely to make a switch in retailers.

Competitors can lure customers away with a better proposition (price relative to perceived value). “Customers are not rational,” Behe said. “They will act on what they perceive and what they believe, and marketers have a huge capacity to nudge some of those decisions.”

A poor retail experience and/or poor product experience can drive customers away as well. At the end of the day, a customer’s decision to buy from a competitor comes from that feeling of regret. In the garden industry, the biggest regrets come from plants that die, which is why it’s so important to focus on finding the right plant for the right place. When customers have a great retail experience, they’re much more likely to come back and see you. The best way to do that is to optimize plant performance and give them the best value proposition. In other words, make them feel like they got what they paid for.

Find out more at: bit.ly/IGCLoyalCustomers

Dr. Charlie Hall, AmericanHort’s chief economist and the Ellison Chair of Texas A&M University’s Department of Horticultural Sciences, said that 2021 was mixed performance within a great year.

Growers reported sales up 20% across the board. Despite that, their profitability ranged from barely profitable to very profitable. Still, he asked growers to consider where they were a few years ago. When comparing gross sales year-to-date to 2019, 63% of growers are up more than 25%.

Part of this is due to input cost increases. Hall showed aggregate input costs increased 10.1% in 2021, 8% year-to-date in 2022, and he is forecasting another 3.6% increase in 2023.

He hopes the industry can continue raising prices to compensate. However, in his research, he found that only 40% of green industry companies are passing 100% of their input cost increases on to their customers — which essentially means they are sharing their margins with their customers.

“That’s magnanimous of you,” he said, “but you won’t be in business for long.”

He also discussed a compensation study with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2022, 21% of businesses said they increased wages more than 10%, 58% of businesses reported increasing wages between 6-10%, and 21% said they increased wages 1-5%. If green industry businesses want to attract or keep employees, their wages must keep up with the cost of living and inflation, Hall said.

Hall pointed to an Axiom marketing survey showing that 19% of respondents plan to add new shrubs or trees to their landscape, a number that compared favorably to other home improvement projects listed as choices.

And finally, although nearly every indicator he showed was positive. Hall said he believes there is a 50% chance of a recession occurring between now and Cultivate’23. A correction is coming, he said, so what should green industry businesses do? Establish your value proposition, don’t expect massive sales and over-leverage your business, or you may be left holding excess inventory.

Find out more at: bit.ly/CultivateSOI

The right customer service philosophy can not only help you and your employees provide better service, it can help you find meaning in your work, said Liz Lark-Riley, managing director of Rockledge Gardens, at her Cultivate’22 session, “The Secret to Keeping Promises: Customer Service 101 for Garden Retailers.”

After spending time working in theater, restaurants and retail at her Florida IGC, Lark-Riley has developed her own approach to serving customers, no matter what type — the Whole-hearted Customer Service Philosophy. It not only makes customers happier, it helps her find meaning and purpose in her work, she said.

It all boils down to one thing: “Customer service is really about making and keeping promises,” she said. Here are the six main tenets:

Find out more at: bit.ly/IGCCustomerService

Katie Dubow, president of Garden Media Group, delivered the 2023 Garden Trends Report: "I Believe In Me." One of the key highlights is always the report’s Color of the Year, and this year’s is terra cotta. Terra cotta encompasses a warm palette consisting of sage greens, creams and beigey browns — all of which are having a moment in the retail landscape.

Retailers can stock containers, rugs or accent pillows in these hues or even invite local painters to come to paint terra cotta planters. Rooted in intention and revived from the acid oranges of the '60s and '70s, terra cotta signifies an optimistic future, Dubow said.

“It evokes a spirit of so many different cultures, and all of the different ways the different cultures think of this color. In our Western culture, it's more about warmth, excitement and amusement — and that's what 2023 is going to be all about,” she said.

Find out more at: bit.ly/GMGTrends23

The Garden Center Group’s Danny Summers facilitated the Retailers’ Choice Awards again this year, presenting 15 exhibitors with honors at Cultivate’22. Here this year’s winning plants. To see the hard goods winners, visit bit.ly/GCGRetailersChoiceAwards22.

1) Monstera obliqua Aroid Greenhouses This unique form of monstera features the most extreme leaf opening, often described as “more holes than leaf.” The plant often features 90% holes and only 10% leaf.

2) Delphinium ‘Red Lark’ Darwin Perennials This exciting new coral-red delphinium has a sturdy upright habit that makes it great in the garden and as a cut flower. This variety is sterile and will not reseed.

3) Colocasia ‘Polargreen Gardenworld-Growing Colors/2 Plant International Polargreen features medium green leaves with pink stems and is hardy all the way to Zone 5. Its mature height is 3-5 feet. This elephant ear does not produce a bulb.

4) Calibrachoa Million Bells ‘Orangina’ Suntory Flowers Suntory brings a new color to the Million Bells series in 2023 with Orangina, named after the popular orange drink. Orangina has been popular internationally since it was introduced in France in 1936. It is a blend of three citrus juices, mandarin orange pulp and sparkling water. Suntory Flowers’ parent company, Suntory Holdings, is part owner of Pepsi Bottling Ventures, which produces Orangina in North America.

5) Hawaii Palm (Brighamia insignis) Northland Floral The Hawaiian Palm (Brighamia insignis) can only be found in the wild on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. It has become nearly extinct and despite the difficulties of natural cultivation in the wild, it can be commercially produced through seed and tissue culture. With proper care the Brighamia can produce yellow star-shaped flowers that can last up to several weeks. The leaves will fall off once a year and will leave scarring on the trunk which shows the new growth. A new canopy will soon start to bud. These palms are relatively easy to take care of.

6) Delosperma ‘DeGherkin’ Dümmen Orange Also known as the ‘Pickle plant’, Delosperma DeGherkin features touchable, fuzzy foliage on small pickle-like foliage. ‘DeGherkin’ looks great in containers and baskets displaying a mounding to trailing habit. Accented by small yellow flowers, ‘DeGherkin’ makes an indoor foliage statement standing alone or placed in collections.

7) Hydrangea ‘Pop Star’ Bailey Nurseries New to the Endless Summer family is a beautiful lacecap hydrangea that’s one of the earliest to bloom with a compact habit loaded with flowers. ‘Pop Star’ is easy to grow and well-suited for both landscapes and containers.

8) Caterpillar Candy Series Centerton Nursery Taking on the task of supporting pollinators, Centerton Nursery has introduced a creative message and selection of plants that caterpillars love. Caterpillar Candy includes a selected number of Asclepias (milkweed) in colorful 4-inch pots with great graphics. You can see a caterpillar on this plant just above the tag!

9) Sedum ‘Little Shimmer’ SelectaOne This new annual sedum has a lot to catch your eye as its small heart-shaped leaves have a shimmer of light green with some darker variations. It also develops delicate, small flowers. This low-maintenance, drought-tolerant groundcover grows to 2-3 inches high with a 5-7-inch spread, and has a trailing habit perfect for hanging baskets or containers.