The New Garden Tool

Last year there was a ton of new garden gadgets to choose from.  I think we will all be haunted for a long time by those Topsy Turvy Tomato planters (of course we sold them, but we still got tons of calls, emails, etc.).  This year I think that the big thing might be . . . smart phones!  Yes, web-enabled smart phones with gardening applications.

A couple of years ago web-enabled phones were few and far between, but now seemingly everyone has some sort of smart phone.  Along with those phones, we are seeing some great applications that are tailored for gardeners.  A couple of my favorites for the iPhone is iLocate – Gardening, Plant Doctor, and BugsDB.  iLocate – Gardening is an app that lets the user easily located nearby garden centers (see screenshot), Plant Doctor helps diagnose plant diseases and problems (you can even pay a little extra to have a professional diagnose the issue with an online form and photos), and BugsDB is a database of hundreds of common garden pests.

Last year we were contacted by 10-20 Media regarding their Garden Pilot app and online database, but it was simply cost-prohibitive for us to implement.  Since then, I’ve been working to come up with an alternative that would allow Bob’s Market to capitalize on the potential of the smart phone craze and not break our marketing budget.  After some consideration and experimentation I discovered QR codes and later Microsoft Tag (refer to my previous blog post for a description of how these work).

Mothers Day is coming up in the next few weeks and we will be ready to roll out our new smart phone support that uses MS Tag.  We are going to have bench cards that link directly to our online plant database, brochures that will allow for folks to instantly sign up for our e-newsletter, and newspaper ads that link directly to our website (just to list a few possibilities).  Best of all, aside from the set up costs and time involved, it’s FREE!  Also, MS Tag is supported by most new smart phones.

Can a Bad Winter Help Garden Centers?

     Let's face it; the outlook for the upcoming spring gardening retail season was pretty bleak back in December.  It seemed as if the “stay-cation” hype during the summer had been replaced by the realization that the end of our economic downturn wouldn’t come about as quickly as we’d hoped, and the “invest in living” mindset had now been replaced by a “buy only the essentials” attitude.  For many people, a beautiful landscape is merely icing on the cake, but it is possible to live without icing.  That was before what is one of the worst winters in recent memory.

     In February, Mason, WV only had three days of sunshine, subzero temperatures, and snow that refused to melt.  Folks throughout the region were essentially trapped inside during the entire month.  This of course leads to inevitable cases of cabin fever.

     Then, in March the weather finally started to break, the snow melted, and the sky turned sunnier.  With the change in the weather also came phone calls about seed, emails about trees, and overall increased traffic to our store – and website.

     Over the past three weeks traffic to our website has increased over 45% and the traffic to our stores has also increased by about the same amount.  Folks I’ve talked to seem to be unable to wait for this summer to arrive.  Maybe a bad winter is good for business.