Zombie Stores and Zombie Departments

Economic conditions have caused many retailers (garden centers included) to reduce inventories. Whether they decided to reduce redundancy and confusion in their merchandise mix, or were simply over-buying and had too much inventory at the wrong time in the wrong amount, the net effect is less inventory on hand. Some retailers handle adjustment to reduced inventory better than others. This falls in line with my previous post on the Horticulture Zombieconomy, but takes it straight to the sales floor where the customer is involved directly.  Ted Hulbut suggests that retailers who aggressively reduce inventory may become Zombie Stores and Zombie Departments, but do they have an alternative?

What will happen when retailers adjust inventory to reduce unproductive items and to match customer traffic and sales levels?

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The Customer Segmentation Gift

The Gift of Each Customer Comes in Many Sizes

The gift of today is the customer who finds your company and your products engaging today. They come to you for precise reasons, sometimes precisely different each time they arrive. What is it today?

Do Garden Blogs Matter?

Bloggers May Be Your Competition!

There is a cartoon that says, “More people read my T-shirt than read your blog.” That is most likely NOT true. Let’s look at why.

The Internet is alive with blogs, and the blogosphere alive with garden blogs – 1191 of them are registered on blotanical. In addition to the multitude of blogs already out there , many new ones are sure to be formed this spring and summer to fill all sorts of niches.

While subscribers and regular readers are a measure of a blogger’s popularity, they are somewhat insignificant in importance as compared to search traffic generated by the blogger, although they can help improve search rankings. Let’s take a look at three of the main reasons why people blog, and then you’ll see why searches matter most, and why garden blogs do matter, in my opinion.