Leaders in Live Goods Innovate To Meet Demand: Science and New Strategies Boost Sales and Increase Loyalty

Marketing Viewpoint by Ruth Winett

Growing your business requires continuous innovation

Have you ever spent a small fortune buying plants for your house or garden only to see them die? Flower farmers and retailers are turning to scientific innovation and better business practices to improve plants, boost revenues, encourage repeat business, and most importantly ensure customers’ success. All companies want their customers or clients to succeed and their businesses to grow. However, forward movement requires continuous innovation.

“Live Goods Are the Future” at Home Depot*

With 2023 revenues of $20 billion, the Home Depot garden center is the retailer’s largest department. Still, Home Depot wants “to make sure we find plants so that [customers] have success in their gardens,” says Jennifar McCormish, Senior Live Goods Merchant. Through “horticulture innovation” Home Depot selects and patents plants, such as its SuperCal petunia, that will thrive in any temperature zone. While they evaluate up to “800 genetic enhancements” annually, only “400 make it to the planting stage.” Ultimately just 40-50 plants are produced for sale. Instead of visiting farms, Home Depot now operates “25 trial gardens in nine climate zones across the US.” Then, Home Depot conducts plant “spring trials” in a central location. With product improvements and more efficient operations, revenues of Home Depot’s garden center top those of the second largest department, appliances at $14.1 billion, 30% less than live goods’ revenues.

Why Orchids Now Outsell Poinsettias**

Colorful and exotic, orchids are now widely available. Demand for orchids once exceeded supply as each plant only produced a tiny number of seeds useful for propagation. However, after 100 years of innovation, cultivators now can propagate orchids through cloning, not capturing tiny seeds that “make a poppy seed look like a coconut [according] to Marc Hachadourian, senior curator of orchids at the New York Botanical Gardens.” As a result, planters can now raise large quantities of high quality identical orchids. “Americans spent $256 million wholesale on orchids in 2023,” exceeding the sale of poinsettias, the previous leader in flowering plants.

Lessons Learned

Cultivators of garden plants and orchids experimented with new ways to meet customer demand by creating hardier plants in sufficient quantity. They also sought efficiencies that would reduce cost, such as operating plant trials and growing identical orchids that could be shipped together in smaller containers. When customers can look proudly at their “lush gardens” or their seven-year old orchids that still bloom, they become repeat customers.

Success creates return customers. All organizations want satisfied customers, clients, or patients. This means tracking complaints and problems and making innovative changes that will address problems. Also, studying workflow and seeking more efficient ways to operate not only lowers costs but also helps providers give their constituents better service.

Sources:

*Cohen, Ben, “Home Depot Has a $20 Billion Secret Garden,” Wall Street Journal, 4/19/25.

**McGinty, Jo Crave, “Once-Exotic Orchids Are Everywhere,” Wall Street Journal, 5/10-11/25.

Market Insights

For Email Marketing you can trust

articles index | home | back