Jessica Beck and her husband run a busy garden center in Louisville, Colorado. These days, that’s an accomplishment in and of itself. Between unpredictable weather patterns, changing consumer habits and the struggles of seasonal staffing, it’s not easy to run a garden center, let alone succeed as Urban Garden has.
To help other home and garden businesses take a page out of their book, Jessica shares some key insights and solid advice for running an efficient, organized and ultimately successful business.
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Invest in your cashiers’ success
Everything starts at the cash register. That’s why, as Jessica says, “the cashier has the most important job in your store.” Not only do they have to be educated on your products and your POS, they also have to be trustworthy enough to allow you, the business owner, to step away when necessary. Without having to worry about the registers, you have more time to focus on important tasks for growing your business.
Because your cashiers are so important, it’s imperative they’re trained properly. Jessica shares that, in the past, she’s seen them quit after just one week due to the stress and overwhelm of it all.
One thing you can do that makes everyone’s lives easier is use more intuitive POS systems in your stores, such as Lightspeed’s. Not only is it incredibly easy to train staff on, it also makes your checkout smoother, leading to “10x faster checkout times” in Jessica’s case.
Learn more about Jessica’s experience with Lightspeed.
Be transparent with your seasonal workforce
In addition to ensuring your cashiers are trained properly to retain this critical staff, it’s also essential that you learn how to manage a seasonal workforce. Jessica’s advice? Be transparent with them. Over the years, they’ve been able to keep a staff of the same seasonal workers who have other jobs lined up when they’re closed.
“When I see the end of that seasonal peak, I tell them, I’m going to be pulling hours back soon, so now is a good time to pick up more hours at your other job.”
She also honours the hours she scheduled employees even if it ends up being a slower day than anticipated. This has helped her build trusting relationships with her staff, and keep them coming back season after season.
Use data to drive your business forward
To help with staffing further, Jessica turns to her POS and sales reports. She looks back at historic data to see peak times and previous schedules to inform her staffing decisions for the future.
She also uses sales and customer data to inform her ordering–something especially important considering she has to purchase dry goods a year in advance.
“The only way I can make accurate decisions is by going back to my reports, looking at what I sold and making a prediction of how much we’re gonna grow,” she says.
Purchasing is particularly difficult for garden centers because of the impacts of the weather. “Weather is our biggest competition. It plays such a big role day to day,” she says, “Literally looking outside and seeing if it’s sunny out can tell us if it’s gonna be a slow day or a busy day.”
As seen in Jessica’s case, data is your best friend when running a business affected by factors outside your control. It’s the best tool you have to forecast future sales, order inventory and keep it from collecting dust on shelves.
Order new stock strategically
In addition to using historical data, Jessica shares other tips for ordering inventory–or rather–ordering less inventory,
“Over-ordering can kill your business,” she states. Instead of ordering so much at once, she focuses on variety, “We sell a little bit of a lot of things. As much variety as possible, then see what sells. I learned that from time, experience and a lot of failure.”
She suggests ordering minimum quantities, especially of new inventory, and giving it time on shelves to see how it performs.
Grow your business through ecommerce
Outside of her physical store, Jessica has found success online, too. Specifically, e-gift cards have changed the game, allowing her customers to purchase and use them with ease. When it comes to ecommerce in general, she puts emphasis on having an online presence if you don’t already.
“If you don’t have a good website for your garden center, you’re missing out,” she says, plain and simple.
Having a digital presence has allowed Urban Garden to keep up with trends and the competition from big box stores. But, as Jessica says, nothing compares to the experience in-store, especially when it comes to plants and flowers.
“We’ve created an experience. You can’t do that online. Our quality isn’t something you can get at a big box store.”
Think strategically like Jessica to overcome challenges in home & garden retail
Over the years, Jessica and team have learned how to navigate the challenges of seasonality, take control where they can and weather the storms that come their way–literally. They’ve done this by investing in their staff, using data to drive their decisions and continually evolving through channels like ecommerce.
To power their daily operations, Urban Garden uses Lightspeed. Lightspeed Retail allows Jessica to manage stock, employee schedules and purchase orders in just one place.
Talk to one of our experts to learn more about Lightspeed’s solutions for home & garden businesses.