ive made a committment but wonder how someone else would have looked at this...

we have great weekend traffic, we sell tons of garden iron and other garden things, we dont have plants or time or the staff to work with finding plants, buying plants, keeping them alive or the ability to learn everything it would take to deal with them.......
so i have made a deal with a plant guy to come in every weekend in may with lots and lots of plants to sell to my customers...with me getting 20% comission.......my staff would do the sellling....and water once a day only.....

good....make me more of a garden center
more reasons to come
make my iron look better, from gazeboes to planters
make me more of a destination
win win i hope..


bad...what if they only have 20$ to spend and they spend it on plants?

my operating expenses run over 20%.... but i dont have to do anything on the plants but write them up and carry them to the car...no extra staff...no waste , nothing that would have to be put on sale...


we sell a huge amount of garden stuff in the season.... its a major category...

how would you look at this?


im excited but am i missing something?

Parnering on a complementary product can almost always create a win-win situation. The only thing I would watch out for is the partner eating too much into your line of business or worst, being your competitor in the long run because he/she has realized how successful your venture is.

There is not much control on the latter, and like the saying goes, "whatever will go wrong, it will go wrong"

If you already have a very strong position in your own market, it helps to minimize some the risks hightlighted.

Best of luck.

It sounds win-win to me. You don't have to advertise that you sell plants, so I'll be overall, it'll work out well (just my opinion).

I started working with local printers of signs and shirts. If I get a customer wanting shirts or large quantity signs, I tax on a small fee for myself, but resell the local guy's stuff. We've become good friends. The shirt guys have a shelve with about 100 of my products in their display room. The sign guy has turned over small silk screened products over to us (decals, bumper stickers, refridgerator magnets). All because we get along. So my gut is telling me you've made a positive move. GOOD LUCK!

capt?? why wouldnt i want to advertize it? i plan to make it as public as possible... not following....

jorge, he wouldnt be able to compete in my location,,,if he did have the money to copy me he isnt close to my location and probbly couldnt be..he does shows and works in another town..... he can see now what my inventory is like and how its doing....his customers are somewhere else....and i get great prices and have good buying contacts that he wouldnt have......

i was a bit worried about my expenses being over my comission.... if you look at it in a certain way..
thanks for your replys..

I don't think this should be a concern. Better they buy something and you get your commission than they buy nothing and you get nothing right?

I think the thing that you should keep in mind is that having the plants you will no longer be "expert" in one product (your garden iron, and ornaments). So, presumably your knowledge of your garden ornaments (which presumably has been the whole product line for the business since it was born) is much more extensive than it is with plants. What if you get someone come to your store and they want to know something from left field about the plants that you have and no-one at your store knows the answer because these plants are a new thing. They may leave thinking that you/your staff don't know anything about your products.

This is probably an over-exaggerated example but I hope you can see that I'm just saying that its best if you stick to what you know best, rather than get a new product line and only kind of half know it.

I think he meant not to PAY for the ads. I see nothing but gain ... or at least potential gain ... from advertising. Just don't spend your money advertising the other guy's product. Fold the plants into your own ads or get PlantMan to pay.

Let us know how this works out. Personally, I'm curious as hell. One of our smaller branch businesses (seasonal) is garden starts. Marketing has always been a challenge.

by april 1 i will have about $20,000 of garden iron in my parking lot...so im really catering to plant lovers ....around here they are used to us not knowing everything........
maybe i can get plant man to help with some ads...hadnt thought of that.... our main discussion was to make them neater than walmart....cause we know they wont be cheaper..hes wanting to be low priced tho and i like that.....
the scary thing about plants to me is keeping them alive, and the time it would take....hes bringing them fri and taking them home sunday...

my goal as always its to be a better destination and this feels right....