How To Do Business
On
The World Wide Web.

Presented By:
John Shelley, Proprietor

The Gardening Specialists ®

John Shelley's Garden Center & Nursery, Inc.
13579 Winterstown Road
Felton, PA 17322-8522
vox 717.246.1414
1.800.828.3405 (PA/MD)
fax 717.246.2170
js@gdnctr.com
http://www.gdnctr.com/

Introduction I was asked by Dr. Paul Thomas to address the timely issue of Doing Business On The World Wide Web, also known as the Net, as it relates to horticulture. Having had a corporate website since January 1996, I feel it's something that's now become second-nature to me and my way of doing business. Let's define the medium: the InterNet is the vast bundle of hardware and software that makes it possible to communicate; the architecture, if you will. The Web is the content; the thoughts, ideas, sounds, words and pictures that we see. If the InterNet had never come along, I wouldn't have missed what I didn't know about. But since it's become an important part of my daily life, losing it's presence and use would make an enormous difference in both the way I now conduct business and the way I will market my company's image, products and services for many years to come. www.gdnctr.com For years, I've maintained that this industry we're involved in is in fact, still in the 19th century in its approach to marketing. As a whole, the industry doesn't take the credit it deserves, while it often takes the blame it doesn't deserve. The lousy Bradford Pear is one example of something this industry's done badly. The rest of the world is about to enter the 21st century; and we'll still be struggling to find our place in a world that has left us behind. Advertising - both strategic and tactical - must play a greater role in what we say and do, both as individual operators and as the industry as a whole. My previous life as a marketing executive in NYCs Madison Avenue jungle for 17 years allowed me the opportunity of seeing what happened to companies that didn't use strategic thinking and tactical moves to accomplish their corporate objectives. In the end, they do poorly and fail. My Resume I worked on some very lucrative and high-profile accounts worldwide, providing both the creative, strategic and tactical strategies that helped make many multi-national corporations into household icons. The business road is littered with many who took wrong turns, didn't take advantage of the imminent opportunities and who ignored the possibilities which were open to them all along the route. It's both a shame and a crime to ignore an opportunity that stares you directly in the face. We've now come full circle back to the Web.          The InterNet The InterNet is one of those rare opportunities - like TV and radio were - which come along once in a lifetime, and beckon us all to participate to whatever extent we choose. But we must make the conscious decision to participate in order to benefit from that new, emerging medium. It's not a passive medium as radio and TV were and still are. It requires effort. The Web has gotten some and will continue to get more negative publicity. No problem, it has broad shoulders and can carry the weight. It's not the Net or Web; it's the people on the network who cause problems. Scams, porno, copyright infringements, email spamming and other minor annoyances will need to be sorted out as the medium matures. Because it affects billions of people in hundreds of countries, everyone is impacted in some way. Since it's a new medium, it's under intense scrutiny from everyone; one little misstep and the feds start jumping all over it. Cries for regulation come from left and right. Countries want to control it. People want to own it. The fact is: no one can control or own it. The people and companies who use it do so through an unwritten coda of protocol that all adhere to. Since the Web will be part of everyone's life from now on, it makes good business sense to explore the possibilities of doing business there. Along with the telephone, FAX, mail and face-to-face contact, the Internet is now the fifth link in a businesses true marketing mix.          Business Life On The Web After leaving NYCs advertising world, I opened my 20acre garden center and nursery in the spring of 1991, after 11 months of construction. For the next 5 years, I built my market and reputation in southern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland. Business was brisk and solid. My Garden Center & Nursery In January, 1996, I decided to try the Net as a surfer and saw the possibilities of online e-commerce. But without a website, it was only a dream. I spent 3 days marooned - not by choice - during the Blizzard of '96 and built a medium-sized, basic, 1st Generation Website, complete with pictures, animations and user-friendly response forms. The site won all kinds of awards. We were reviewed by local and national media, and hundreds-of-thousands of people have visited the site. The counter at the bottom of each page only lists 120,000+ visitors, but it's crashed a dozen times, losing more than 500,000 visitors. I've re-built the website several times now; most recently into a 3rd Generation Website, and use visual metaphors to enhance each visitor's experience. Today, the call for mail order is almost overwhelming. I've chosen not to do mail order just now, so I sell plant material only at the Garden Center complex, although I get hundreds of requests each week to do so. I refer those requests to other reputable sellers, whom I've linked to on my website's Horticultural Links page. Reputable Horticultural Links          Defining The Business Opportunity Spend a few hours surfing the Web and you'll readily see the variety of types of business storefronts. Retail. Wholesale. Barter. Auction. Information. Image. And infinite combinations of each. Defining the end market - consumer, re-seller, distributor - is critical to figuring out what storefront would benefit your operation. If you're a grower, and many at this conference are, a list of plants in various stages of production would be appropriate. Here's a 3rd Generation Website which I built for a grower of high-quality dwarf conifers, in New Jersey. Bluesterling Nursery I've turned the site over to Jim and Barb, so they can further develop it. They've reported an 11% increase in sales since going online 8 months ago. All retail requests are referred back to their regional sales reps for fulfillment. Figuring out which parameters is easy; the challenges are:1) audience, 2) content, and 3) architecture in which to display it. The metaphor is critical. The ambience. The look and the feel. Easy navigation around the site. Finding what you what quickly. A good designer knows how to accomplish that. How is the easy part. Back to why. In effect, you have 15-20 seconds of a visitor's undivided attention before s/he is lost to another distraction. Retail is a much more difficult realm to dwell in; the buyer is fickle, easily distracted and prone to leave on a whim. Wholesale buyers are more dedicated to finding what they want and will make the extra effort to search out websites which provide the product or service. Build it yourself? Have someone else do it? If you're competent in HTML and graphic design, by all means try it. If you aren't, spend the few thousand upfront for a quality storefront website. It'll pay huge dividends down the road. A bad or mediocre looking website represents you and your company: remember, you don't get a second chance to make a good first impression. Security concerns? Encryption? Sure, it's in a state of flux right now but standards are being worked on and adopted and some will be implemented by year's end. Maybe. Actually, it's no more risky to do online e-commerce with a credit card than it is to leave the signed credit card receipt with a restaurant. Security Concerns Explained Both www.dell.com and www.amazon.com do billions of dollars of business each year with no problems. Secure ordering is a reality. Thousands of businesses do billions a year just on the Net, as an adjunct to their other, more traditional channels. As either a wholesaler or retailer, your customers need to be online to find you. And, of course, you need to attract new customers to grow the business. More on that in a minute. Here's a friend's site in Millers, MD, which specializes in hundreds of varieties of high quality herbs, shipped both by their own trucks and by mail. Hillcrest Nursery The design and graphics are clearly in need of renovation - it's clearly an old 1st Generation Website - but the mechanics are sound and it accomplishes what they want: a solid e-commerce and sales presence which augments local and regional sales. If you sell online, you'll need to ship UPS or FedEx, to fulfill orders. These folks have a state-of-the-art greenhouse and shipping operation to accommodate online and traditional sales. Another high quality, west coast conifer nursery which I deal with extensively is Iseli Nursery in Boring, Oregon. They make a very strict point up front of telling all visitors that they are a wholesale operation only. Their sales reps are clearly accessible via email and phone. And for a 2nd Generation Website, it's a durable place to do business, though it will need updating soon.          Marketing Your Website As I said earlier, regardless of which you are - wholesaler or retailer - your customers need to be online to find you. And, of course, you need to attract new customers to grow the business. Just putting up a website through a local Internet Service Provider (ISP) isn't going to get the results you want. It requires a little more effort. With over 600 search engines available, it makes sense to publicize your site through a service, for a small upfront fee. They do all the submission work, after you've filled in some lengthy forms. Novice that I was back in January - February 1996, I spent over 100 hours visiting both search engine sites and horticultural sites, leaving my url with a special message: "Although it's Winter outside, it's always warm and tropical in my greenhouses. First time visitors get free eye flowers and can pet the kitty. Just rub your browser; Pickles will know it's you!" Okay, okay, it's hokey but it worked and helped get tremendous traffic to my website in the first few months. Remember, I'm a retail Garden Center & Nursery Operation. People were showering me with awards and 10,000 visitors showed up in the first 6 weeks just from the links to award sites and to other horticulture websites. It was a tremendous amount of work, but it was worth every minute of surfing and emailing that simple, hokey message to tens-of-thousands of people. I made a lot of friends and many, many people still remember me to this day. Recognitions To Date I had requests for landscape design and installation meetings, rare, unusual and hard-to-find plant material (which I carry), mulch deliveries and much, much more. What started out as 20-30 emails per weeks requesting my services has now exploded into 300+ emails per day. In '96, I did $86,300 from Internet business. In '97, just over $136,000 came in as a direct result of the website. This year, we'll probably do close to $200,000 in additional business. Roughly 80% of these figures are from landscape contracting; 15% retail sales and 5% walk-in from, both from out-of-state people "finding" us and coming to visit. I'm still amazed as I sit and go over the days requests, just how many people are from somewhere else and want our expertise, based upon what they've experienced at my corporate site. These are all dollars which I would have had to invent other "profit centers' to realize, had the Internet not come along when it did. And had I not been lucky enough to hitch my company to with a 3rd Generation website. My site is highly informational and provides tons of advice and criticism about every horticultural topic I care to discuss. Our Advertising The advertising page is just one of over 300 pages - it's a 65mgb site - which challenge many peoples long-held notions about plant material. And it upsets some people. Others, it urges to action. And still, for others, it provides copious amounts of information.          The Buyers Wholesale buyers tend to be more focused; they're after certain plant material and have a quantity and price in mind, since mark-up is a main consideration for resale. They tend to scour a seller's site, print out lists, compare values, place the order and request immediate shipment. Retail buyers are a more fickle lot; they're shoppers with shorter attention spans, easily distracted by website animations, java applets and other minor annoyances. They also come in two flavors: the serious purchaser and the non-serious dilettante who wastes your time. It's critical to know the difference and not waste your time on the amateur dilettante. In the past 2+ years, I've spent a lot of time researching and answering questions from many people who've got gardening problems, only to have their email bounce back because it was an invalid address. Usually, it's the AOLers with the problems. By taking the extra few minutes and figuring out what's wrong with their email address - usually an incorrect space or dot - I've helped many out and gained new customers locally and regionally. For me to sell 70 cubic yards of mulch per week via the Internet is truly amazing. That's one tractor trailer load to people who've only read my "Mulch: Myth v Reality" 1-2-3, ads online. Mulch, Part 1 and Mulch, Part 2 and Mulch, Part 3 Also, the subsequent controversy and newspaper coverage made front page headlines throughout the region. Mulch Controversy Explodes! and Mulch Controversy Explodes Again! Sure, I can't economically deliver mulch to Cleveland or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, or even Baltimore, but I can and do take an advocacy position on many topics to inform both gardeners and the general public what to watch out for. In turn, the response is incredible. I use the Web for a lot more than just marketing my products and services. I use it as a platform to raise the bar and push the envelope for both the horticulural consumer and seller and to improve the industry as a whole. It's a device which allows you to do what you want with it.          In Sum Making money on the Internet is perhaps the easiest thing I've ever done. Building the website was a real challenge. If you build a quality website, and market it correctly, they'll come. If there is anyone in this room who sees the wisdom of adding the InterNet to an already sound marketing mix, don't hesitate. That will be one of the boldest steps you'll ever take, as well as perhaps the most profitable. You now know my success story and my website address. If you have any questions, send me some mail. See you on the Web!