April 2023 - 18

MERCHANDISING
" The average customer spends maybe an hour in your
store; having them searching for the must-have items on
their list is never a good thing. You want the customer to
quickly find the items they're shopping for so they can
make their choices and have more time to browse - and
maybe add a few more things to their cart. Depending on
the time of the season, it is really important to keep some
things consistent. "
Rule of Six
Zawojski says she has a rule for merchandising green
Sunnypoint Gardens is a
Proven Winners destination.
example. They may like that we paired nepeta with yarrow in
a display, but want a different variety or color of a plant we
used. It's important that they can still shop a larger selection
of the plant they liked. "
She says that, as a Proven Winners destination,
Sunnypoint Gardens works with Proven Winners on their
merchandising signs for the destination space.
" For the destination displays, we'll use a sign that
features photos of the plants that are in the display - like
a sign that says 'What's the Buzz?' for a PW butterfly bush
display. Sometimes the sign is the first thing the customer
sees, and it can help them notice something in particular
when they are in what often seems like a sea of benches
filled with plants. "
She says marketing materials that Proven Winners
provides include the Sunnypoint Gardens logo.
Keep It Moving
Moving merchandise around the store - even entire
displays - helps with sales, Zawojski says.
" Moving the exact same display to a completely different
part of the store can make a big difference because
customers will notice different things, depending on how
they're walking through your store. "
In addition, it might help them to see something that they
didn't see the last time they passed through the area.
" Ironically, that's something I learned when I worked in
clothing very briefly, " she says, " that moving merchandise
to a different rack can make a customer see something they
hadn't noticed before.
" We're a very visually overwhelming industry, and it's hard
to know exactly what someone's going to focus on first.
Sometimes just moving things around can make a difference
in terms of getting the customer's attention. "
She, however, cautions against moving things around too
much. " Customers tend to rely on items being consistently
located. During our busiest months, our section of coleus is
always in the same area of the greenhouse, for example. The
mix of coleus displayed on those benches may change, but
it's always in the same location, at least until things slow
down and our inventory sells through.
goods of " nothing less than six. So if we get to the point
where we don't have enough availability of a particular
variety of a plant in the display, we'll switch it out with
another variety or a different plant that looks good in the
display's color combination. "
And grouping plants by feature makes shopping easier for
customers, she says. Sunnypoint Gardens can then direct
customers to the benches with the plants that fill the garden
need they're looking for.
" I like to look at our plant displays as bench mannequins
almost the same way a clothing store uses a mannequin, "
she says. " We use bench mannequins as a way to display an
assortment of what you can use if your particular interest
is this. Like showing different plant color combinations,
or showing different plants for a specific purpose, like
attracting pollinators, or shade-loving shrubs, that
customers can use in their own garden. "
She says baskets work the same way - customers may
not buy the basket, but it might inspire them to choose a
similar color combination or to buy the individual plants.
Waves of Color
In addition to grouping, Zawojski says she likes to do
product color blocking and display plants in color waves.
" A lot of our merchandise and especially our annual
benches, like petunias, begonias and calibrachoa, are all
displayed in a wave of color - the yellows lead to oranges,
then to reds, and into pink shades and so on. These displays
are great for a couple of reasons, 1) they are very appealing
to the eye of the customer - and they don't necessarily
realize that. And 2) it's really effective for us in terms of
quickly being able to restock and also keep an eye on what
the color trends are with customers. "
Sourcing Ideas
Zawojski says she and her husband like to get out to
other garden centers to see how their displays are set up.
" We like to stop at other garden centers and see what
other people are doing with displays because there are lots
of different ideas and ways of looking at things, and it's
always great to learn. "
She says clothing stores and other retailers are great
places to find merchandising ideas, especially for their nonplant-material
displays.
" Color trends are usually important, " she says. She pays
attention to how Pottery Barn and other types of home
decor retailers set up their stores " because style and color
trends definitely translate when people shop for plants,
and with the color choices they make. "
April 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2023
