Playbook, garden centre
Pot size, not species, is what the number on the label is about
Somebody asks what a plant costs and has not yet said which of the four prices on that bench they mean, because they do not know the question has a variable in it. The number is printed on a label pushed into a pot, it goes up when the plant is potted on, and it comes down again on a sticker at the end of the season. Nothing about that reaches a page in time to be quoted from.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Pot size decides the price rather than species, so one plant occupies several prices along a single bench, and a visitor asking how much it costs has not yet told anybody which of them they mean.
- The stock grows. A shrub potted on into a larger container through the summer is genuinely a different product at a different price from the one somebody priced in spring, and no correction was made anywhere because nothing was wrong.
- End of season reductions are applied on the bench with a sticker by whoever is working that afternoon, which means the reduced price exists in no document at all and can never be quoted, only mentioned as a practice.
- Bulk materials carry three prices at once, by the bag, by the bulk bag and sometimes by the load, and the three cannot be compared without knowing the volume behind each, which is the arithmetic customers get wrong before they set off.
How it arrives
- how much is a 3 litre lavender
- do you reduce plants at the end of the season
- how much is a bulk bag of bark
- why is the same shrub two different prices
- how much are your christmas trees this year
- is a bulk bag cheaper than the bagged stuff
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Price bands by pot size, written as bands | For each group you carry, the container sizes you sell it in and the band each sits in, rather than a figure against a variety. Bands survive a season and a figure does not, and the band is what lets somebody decide whether to bring the estate car. |
|---|---|
| What a bulk bag actually holds, and what it covers | Volume, rough weight and the area it covers at a usable depth, next to the same figures for a handled bag. This is the comparison every customer is trying to do in their head in the car park, and getting it wrong is a second journey. |
| Christmas trees by height and by type | The height ranges you sell, the types you carry and how they differ in needle drop and price, plus whether netting, a stand or delivery is extra. This is the one week of the year when a price question is really a budgeting question for a family. |
| Your loyalty club terms in full | What membership costs, what it takes off, whether it applies to reduced lines, bulk materials and the restaurant, and when it does not apply at all. Members ask about the exclusions and non members ask whether it is worth it, and both are answerable from one page. |
The reply
The honest answer is that it depends on the pot, and I would be guessing if I gave you one figure. We sell most shrubs in several container sizes, and the bands for each size are on our plant pricing page, so a small one and a specimen sized one are a long way apart on the same bench [1]. Two things worth knowing before you come. Plants get potted on through the growing season, so a price you saw earlier in the year may have moved with the plant rather than with any decision. And we do reduce tired stock at the end of a season, but that happens on the bench with a sticker rather than anywhere I can read, so I cannot tell you what is reduced today [2]. If you want a quantity for a job, leave your details and somebody will price it properly.
It names the variable in the first sentence, because the customer does not know their question was incomplete and no figure would have satisfied them anyway. Potting on is explained as a physical event rather than a price rise, which is what stops it reading as sharp practice. The reductions are volunteered and then explicitly placed out of reach, since mentioning them and then refusing to quote is more useful than pretending they do not happen.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor wants a price for a quantity, a landscaping job or a hedge run, asks what has been reduced today, or asks for a trade rate.
I can give you the published bands but I cannot price a job or tell you what is reduced on the benches this week. Leave your name, an email and roughly what you need and how much of it, and somebody who can put a real number on it will come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never quote a price for a named plant, since the figure belongs to a label on one pot of one size and the plant it is attached to has been growing since anything was written down.
- Never say something has been reduced or is in a sale, because bench reductions are physical stickers with no document behind them and a customer will drive over on the strength of it.
- Never compare a bulk bag with handled bags on price without the volumes attached, as the comparison is meaningless and the customer will order the wrong quantity from it.
- Never offer a discount, a club rate or a trade price, all of which are decisions somebody with a margin to protect makes about a particular order.
Questions
- Should we index our plant prices so it can quote them?
- No, and this trade is the strongest case against it anywhere. The price is attached to a living thing in a particular pot on a particular bench, and it moves with growth, with the season and with a sticker. Publish bands by container size and let the label own the number.
- Can it work out how many bags somebody needs?
- It can quote the coverage you publish and let them do the sum, which is the useful half. It should not calculate a quantity for a described area, because the depth, the settling and the shape of the bed are all assumptions, and the customer treats the total as an order.
- What is worth publishing that most centres have not?
- The volume comparison between a bulk bag and handled bags, with coverage at a usable depth. Everybody publishes both prices and almost nobody publishes what each holds, which is the only way the two numbers mean anything next to each other.
Keep reading
- Everything for a garden centreSeasonality drives every question a garden centre gets. Plant care answers well, toxicity and site suitability need a person.
- Handling pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- A planted shrub is not a return, it is a guarantee claimA tool comes back under a returns policy. A shrub that has been in soil for a month is a guarantee claim with different evidence.
- Almost every refund conversation here starts as a replacement offerThe guarantee is written to give a replacement. The customer wants the cash. That gap is what nearly every one of these is about.
- Both halves of this end at the label, and the label is the instructionCompost contents and pet safety arrive in the same words. Neither is answerable here: the label is the instruction, not a summary.
Try it on your own material
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