STAY OUT of the Garden Center Graveyard

Graveyard of Defunct Aircraft

Why do they not ask for help?

The grave yard of garden centers is growing like the Arizona graveyard of defunct aircraft. Contraction of the airline industry has caused many older, inefficient and costly to maintain aircraft to be retired permanently. It used to be the case that new upstart competitors would buy older aircraft to start their companies, but it is actually less expensive to make the payments on newer machines that use less fuel, require less labor to operate, and require less repair and maintenance.

It saddens me to learn of such things as the pending closure of Porter’s Home & Garden Center near Ocala Florida. Ocala.com reported that liquidation of inventory has begun. The loan in default is backed by the business and the private homes of three of the Porter family owners.I had never heard of Porter’s until reading of their pending demise. Their website tells a wonderful story of a family business that had grown by leaps and bounds. Photos on Porter’s Home & Garden Center website show a quite large and modern facility. A second location had been opened but closed less than a year later.

The real story on Porter’s may be quite different. Since this is not a news blog we won’t report on what happened other to relay the news agency information. The point of mentioning Porter’s at all is to recognize that the graveyard of garden centers continues to grow.

Many of the residents of that graveyard arrive there as a result of their failure to survive current business conditions. Many of these garden centers were unknown to most leaders in the industry. They were practically invisible to their peers because they didn’t participate in the trade associations, attended garden center events and tours. If they did reach out for help, they must have done so too late.

Do you need help? Do you know someone who does? The gates to the garden center graveyard are wide open. It doesn’t care who enters, but we do. Are you on a slippery slope? Reach out for help before it is too late.

Contrary to what you may believe, consultants are not too expensive. It actually may be too expensive not to get help. We are in the business of helping people who are hurting as much as we’re here to help those who are doing well do even better. Leave it up to us to show you how you can pay for our services. Speaking for myself, I do this to make a living. Like my clients, I am raising a family and have to charge what I have to in order to pay my bills. I assure you we’re not getting rich doing this. We wouldn’t work for free because clients wouldn’t take us serious. We’d probably just give all the money to charity if we didn’t need some of it to live on.

People in business are hurting. They may not appear to be hurting as their need to protect their dignity and avoid embarrassment causes them to put on a good front. We’ve helped many others avoid the pain that Porter’s is apparently going through. We’ve been there, done that, and seen it all. We’re not afraid to get into the messy situation and roll up our sleeves to help. All you’ve got to do is ask.

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