John’s Blog

Channel 7 is one of the major TV stations in Australia. During the week of 8th April I presented a session on the Garden Guru’s show on retailing and marketing of strawberries. It caused quite a reaction. It’s interesting – how you have to present yourself in the media. I said “Many researchers believe that […]

I have discovered two books that could be of help to you in business. One is focused on the farm market industry and the other on the garden industry and both are from Ontario in Canada Pot It Up By Frankie Flowers {yes, that is his real name} The garden industry today is about providing

Flowering plant sales in Japan have dropped by 22.2% in the last five years. There are many reasons for this, one is the lack of marketing, another is a reliance on the auction system that has devalued plants and made them a commodity and another is the lack of displays that appeal to the targeted

The major independent garden centre conference and trade show in the USA is held every August in Chicago. This year John Stanley is the keynote speaker on the Thursday of the conference. The show is one of the best shows in the USA to reveal new products to the garden trade. It also has three

In the first three months of the year I have travelled between Japan and the USA and have had to cope with customer service in both countries. When one travels to Japan the first reaction is that most sales staff are rude. Walk into a store and the staff ignores you. The reason is culture.

One of the challenges retailers have in 2013 is connecting with the community and being seen as relevant within your catchment area. One way of connecting is with schools. One of the challenges schools have is bullying and if a retailer could connect with the school and promote healthy eating as well as helping to

Our first webinar of the year was on Phone Apps and how we can use them as retailers. We need to understand how are consumers are using mobile devices so that we can design our marketing campaigns more effectively as retailers and small businesses. Harvard University in the USA has done a detailed study on

Keeping up with trends is a real challenge these days. One way I keep up is to follow the Trend Hunter. His latest ideas for February are in the Trend Report. There are some real gems in here to search out. If you are looking for product trends spend some time looking at the ideas