Keeping It Light for May

Amanda Thomsen

You’re too busy to read the complicated analysis of dollars spent per customer vs. colors of zinnias grown that I had totally planned to write about, so I’m gonna keep it light and snack-sized for you. Here are some things I want to talk to you about:

• Have you ever thought about turning your garden center into an outdoor movie theater? How fun would it be to set up straw bales and show a family fun movie to get people in after dark? Yes, you might need lighting if you don’t already have it but, still, it’s something to think about. It’s a trend (check out those pins on Pinterest!) and depending on what you sell, you may be able to demonstrate how backyard living is really done right!

• Have you heard of the Dolly app? It’s like Uber or Lyft but for moving stuff from point A to point B. For example, if someone wants to buy a poured stone water feature, but you don’t offer delivery, they can set the delivery up from an app on their phone, right there at your garden center, and you get to stay the heck out of it. We used it for a vintage sofa we recently bought and we were in love with the service and price. It could come in handy, right?

• Fiverr is a new site that offers creative services in a marketplace. Need a new flyer? There are people dying to do that for you for $5. Need some video shot? $5. The creators set the prices and you can choose based on what they are offering and a review system. Choose from web site design, radio advertising, press releases, email marketing, belly dancing and wayyyyyy more. This could be a great way to try out some new ways of marketing or a method of getting some stuff off your plate. Bonus: someone may do it better than you’d hoped … for $5.

• Get rid of your fax machine. It’s 2016. PDFs have every capability (and more) than that dusty old contraption. Use that space to offer employees lots of snacks.

• If you think home and garden shows aren’t cool so you don’t participate in them, maybe you’re the problem. Maybe they’d start being cool if you were in them. Because you’re cool. Cool like the Fonz. Think about it.

• I saw a sign in an antique store (in fact, the one we bought the sofa from that was moved via Dolly) that said “Be Brief, Be Businesslike and Be Gone” and I really loved that. I can’t say if it’s right or wrong allllllll the time. But maybe just in May?

• If you have an hour-long workshop for kids on Saturday mornings, where a mom can drop their kid and shop for perennials for an hour while the kid makes a hideous craft that they will then take home and forcibly display?? SCORE. Charge a nominal fee for the class and let the instructor of the class have a really large Bloody Mary afterwards. Perhaps 2.

• One time, I couldn’t think of the word “radishes” so I said “salad toots” instead and the person I was talking to was all “radishes, right?”

I hope your busy season is terrific. I hope your lunch breaks come on time, that you lose 15 pounds from all the extra walking and talking, that your iced coffees never get warm and that the bathroom is always free when you need it. May the truck drivers be kind and never hit anyone’s car on the way out. I hope you never get plantar fasciitis. Thank you for what you do, namely, providing the good to gardening addicts like myself. I really appreciate it. Really! GP

Amanda Thomsen is now a regular columnist in Green Profit magazine. You can find her funky, punky blog planted at KissMyAster.co and you can follow her on Facebook and Twitter @KissMyAster.