Put your prices UP. If you drop your prices further you will make a loss, and the more plants you grow and sell , the bigger this loss will be!!!

Whatever you grow, grow it well. Its been said here before, if you want to suceed as a small independent grower....quality, quality, quality.

Don't spend a penny on magazine/newspaper advertising.

Take your best quality plants to your local market. Get your plants seen and let word of mouth do the advertising for you.

I think that the only real answer about what should you sell should come from you. Usually, as a smaller operation, you don't have the ability to cover everything, thus you will not be able to carry certain plants, or even certain types of plants.

Like Vouts said, you really have to focus on quality. Big-box stores, like Home Depot, Lowes, and Wal-Mart can have huge amounts of plants available at uber-low prices. Trying to directly compete with them, playing their game, is a sure way to lose.

Instead, focus on quality. You can't have a huge selection of plants, so pick a few and grow them well. Maybe you could specialize in a few certain types of plants, and try growing a larger variety of those plants. Any way in which you can distinguish yourself from big-box stores will usually work in your advantage.

-Audric

There's a small retail nursery here that specializes in Coleus. Coleus you say--how common. He, however, trains them as standards. Imagine those great and glorious leaves as a ball of fire on a trunk in a pretty little pot. People scoop them up and at very high prices!

Bonsai said: "You can't have a huge selection of plants"

We're small and next year we'll have 450 varieties.
What do you consider "huge"?

I agree with Vouts, that is very good advice.

Customers always want what you do not have. If you have it the following year, your too late.

It is a very difficult task to predict the buying habits of the finicky gardening public, often they buy on impulse. I try very hard for impulse sales, plants they cannot resist.

I do sell a lot of different varieties. I am a perennial grower so as you can probably imagine from that section there are lots and lots of different plants (a lot of which I do sell)
So far every plant I`ve sold has had positive feedback I hope I`ll be able to keep that up.
From reading your replies, however, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps because I don`t really sell locally most of my plants are usually sent nationwide through mail order that may be where my problem lies. Maybe if I was to take a good selection to say a farmers markets I would get a lot more sales for that 1 day. The reason why I choose to sell wholesale across the country is because I can get a lot more money per plant. At the moment Im getting about £4 per plant (which actually gives me an extremely good profit) The only problem with selling this way is I dont get as many orders as what I`d get at a farmers market. The only good thing I can say at the moment is quantity of plants per person is quite high.
Thanks for your replies, keep them coming.

I do a small amount of mailorder business via my website.

I find this to be the least profitable part of my operation. The time taken to choose the plants, clean them up, pack them, do the invoice, fill in the shipping paperwork and drive to the postal distribution center is disproportionate to the so called 'profit'. However as you rightly say, when people buy, they usually order a lot of plants.

Then there are the shipping charges - impossible to compete with the catalogue box shifters sending out two leaves in pots the size of a thimble using digitally enhanced and extremely optomistic photos with a nominal or no shipping charge. (Many of my customers on the nursery are those previously disappointed with their mailorder purchases).

My minimum shipping charge is 12 euros/dollars, and even then I am losing money!

Mailorder is probably the most cutthroat part of the sector. Quality is more difficult to sell, unless people see your plants in the leaf and bud so to speak.

I saw you posted in another thread that you have 10 employees - that's quite a sizeable operation in nursery terms. One of the largest perennial producers here in France has a permanent staff of just over 30. They shift about a million perennials in pots each year. How does the efficiency of your organisation compare? (300,000 plants a year?) If you've read Tony Avents book, he mentions that the least profitable of all the nurseries are the mid sized operations due to certain inefficiencies in the nursery organisation. Might be worth a read in the quieter summer months to give yourself some fresh ideas.

Hope that helps

I agree with the specialising suggestion, although you will need to have your ear close to the ground to figure out what the next trend will be. Whilst ornamental grass and phormium or verbena bon. are enjoying their 15 minutes of fame you need to be looking for the next thing unless you try to create this trend yourself.
I am not a nurseryman but I buy a lot from them and vouts is absolutely correct about quality if you want repeat buyers. I go to one place that is more expensive than any of its competitors and gives a measly 10% discount but they sell interesting stuff that is always in good shape.
Recently the trend has been towards bigger plants in bigger pots and this is very popular for those who can't wait for plants in 4 inch pots to grow (i.e. all of my clients). But beware; a repeat customer will be po'd if the pot is not full of roots. I was spending several thousand dollars a month at a nursery that grew some unusual perrenials and in 1 gallon pots too, and when I thought I had confidence in them I ordered via the Internet. I picked up my order and drove to the site to watch the guys turn 4 inch plants out of these pots along with a boot full of seed mix. That piece of chicanery cost that nurseryman, as he re-imbursed me although I never returned.

I'm in a completely different situation but you asked, so I'll give you my advice for what it is worth...

You asked... where would you go to first - price, variety, increase advertising.

I would raise the price a tiny amount on the plants you have in stock that are in excellent shape. I would hold back any premium species that just aren't up to that standard and hope that in time they will improve. I would discount any plants that you don't want to sell anymore - get rid of them or compost them. Taking care of underperformers is costing you money, best to focus on what you already have that is special.

If sales are that flat - I would not invest money in new species. I would focus on stock you already own. Plot, plan and dream about what you want to do next, but don't spend any money until sales improve.

Selling higher quality is very difficult with print advertising. It is far easier to sell higher quality with face to face sales. Find a way to position your stock in front of the buying public. Hold open houses, attend trade shows, participate in festivals, anything that puts your plants in front of customers.

The really successful plantsmen promote what they have. They do not follow the trends, they create the trends. They find a new group of plants that excites them, then they write about it, then they speak about it at functions and meetings, then they sell them, then they move on to the next group. While they are busy promoting this years hot item they already have in propagation the next two or three cycles of material. So they think and plan far in advance.

Vouts firstly may I say that I have had Tony Avents book for a while now and found it interesting reading, although it doesnt really talk about nursery production itself. To compare my buisness operation I suppose I produce roughly 1.8m plants a year at the moment though I`d guess we`re only selling about 1m of those. Dont quote me on it because I don`t have the actual figures to hand. Due to the drop in sales I have reduced the production quite a lot. At the moment I`m managing to keep all employees in work although this could change very quickly. And to be honest 10 employees for this size nursery compared to all other similar nurseries in the area is actually quite small. The smallest of nurseries employ about 20 people. And not only that most nurseries employ some extraordinary trades (for example an agriculture fitter). Luckily we manage quite well with 10 people which allows me to keep my costs down.
With mail order plants I dont have to worry about potting composts or the containers or the labels (although I send out a factsheet with every plant) currently I have all printing costs free of a relative as well. Mail order also allows me to send smaller plants (although not quite as small as what you explained) and still get good feedback and good money for them. At a direct selling point (farmers markets etc.) I wouldnt stand a chance of being able to do this. I currently charge £3.00 for postage and packaging and the actual cost of it comes to £1.39 per plant which also gives me a little extra. I do agree with what you say about people having to see quality before they buy and I think thats where my problem lies. All I can do at the moment is try and make the info pages sound as intriguing as possible. At the moment I wouldnt take my plants to a farmers market as the quality for it compared to mail order is a lot higher. But dont get me wrong because I am still getting the good feedback from the mail order stuff. I could let the plants grow more and then send them to the farmers markets but it would be a huge loss - loss of money, loss of employees and also a huge build up of unsold plants!!!
I agree that the trend at the moment is for bigger plants and I have found this a lot recently. In particular with buddleias, you want to see the amount of questions Ive had this week about them with regards to size. I agree with John and will certainly try his idea. Thanks for all the replies.

I agree you're not going to shift an extra 800,000 plants at your local farmers market!!!

I'm no expert but I would say that turning over 1 million plants on a 10 person business is pretty good in terms of manpower efficiency!!!

If you're still not profitable then I'm guessing you have some pretty big costs associated with running your nursery.

IMHO heated greenhouses are not necessary (and can even be a hindrance) for hardy perennial production (except maybe for rooting cutttings). I manage fine here with a couple of cold tunnels where the winter climate is generally much colder than in the UK - we had a late frost of -14C on the 1st march this year for example. Lots of stock stays outside covered with horticultural fleece without any great losses.

I'd concentrate on carefully selecting the lines that you grow for next season - a quick analysis of your current stock will give you some clues as to which lines don't shift.

An alternative is to reduce the quantity per variety and increase your range.

Bonjour Vouts
Thankyou very much for all your replies I am having much fun reading them and am learning a lot. You seem to have a very good knowledge.
Our nursery is profitable but is not making much of a profit at this current time.

Sell to the box stores.

Usually they don't know what the plants are and do, so you get to chose what to sell.

So you get to sell out. Which is heaven.

As long as the varieties are a bit more difficult to propagate, the competion at the box store won't be growing them also.

If the box store balks at your being too small a grower, ask for "fill-in vendor" status.
When they see your plants sell faster, you will get to be primary vendor like.