Retailers need to pay more attention to their lawn and garden departments, especially regarding horticulture, said Leon Nicholas, who kicked off the GROW Executive Summit conference with a presentation titled, “The Shifting Nexus of Retailing.”
Leon Nicholas, the Vice President of Retail Insights and Solutions for WestRock Inc., said Euromonitor reported that horticulture sales among U.S. retailers increased 9% in 2020, outpacing growth in the entire lawn and garden category. “For retailers, horticulture is now a prime driver of their overall sales,” he said. “Retailers are recognizing more and more that horticulture provides a more gratifying story to tell than a box of cereal.”
The areas of merchandising and fulfillment are undergoing a radical shift that will significantly impact retail going forward, Nicholas states. Retailers are stepping back and examining categories — and realizing that not all categories should be treated the same from a merchandising perspective. They are also changing their strategies for “how and where they want to play” in categories.
How that merchandising appears depends on three standards, the first being “functional,” Nicholas explained. “Functional” merchandising is about offering needed supplies, but with appearance and branding playing important roles. For instance, “selection queues within the garden center, such as color, are critical to help shoppers navigate in terms of what they should be looking for,” he added.
The second standard focuses on “functional delight,” where retailers set out to delight shoppers by solving a problem, like educating them on how to plant a garden.
“This is not so much about selling a product or category, this is about selling a project,” Nicholas said. “This is helping to delight shoppers by saving them time.”
“Functional delight” can mean using themes to attract consumers.
“Think about horticulture as health and wellness,” Nicholas said, noting that self-care is a topic that has emerged from the pandemic. “So, think about health and wellness opportunities, [like] plants being air purifiers or having house plants for healing. Don’t be afraid to offer these kinds of suggestive things at this level.”
The third standard is about “fully delighting” shoppers and “engaging to differentiate,” Nicholas said. “[Retailers] are using live goods to sell the broader proposition of delight,” he said. “We’re seeing big increases of a store within a store, like making live goods become a broader part of the home experience.”
More consumers are making live goods part of the furniture and permanent fixtures, Nicholas stated, sending the message that they view live goods as a higher-end proposition.
