Nursery Distributors Target Contractors

The landscape business keeps growing, and landscape contractors' suppliers are taking notice and reacting accordingly. In particular, one recent trend has been the development nursery rewholesalers, which are essentially nursery suppliers that do very little of their own growing. Instead, these companies purchase large quantities of nursery material from numerous growers to provide a one-stop shop opportunity to their customers.

Representatives of more than 70 such rewholesalers traveled to Atlanta in September to tour a handful of leading rewholesalers and learn from each other. Tour stops included a new Home Depot Landscape Supply Store, John Deere Landscapes' largest location, Pike Wholesale Nurseries and more.

Most of the tour attendees also noted that business continues to be strong for them. Sales are climbing for Arbor Valley Nursery in Brighton, Colo., according to Matt Edmundson, administration manager for the company, but he admitted some concern about contractors looking to cut their costs by buying direct from some growers. "They're trying to save $100 on a tree by doing this, but how will they handle caring for that tree in their yard?" he wondered. "What will they do when one dies? And how do they ensure that they're getting all of the same trees from the grower?

"Those are the issues that go along with being a nursery, and we know how to handle those things," Edmundson continued. "Plus, if contractors start buying direct from the growers, they're going to tie up all of their cash in April and that means they're going to have problems in August."

One hot issue for many rewholesalers is the notion of them offering a warranty on the plant material they sell. Some of the nurseries on the tour reported they offer full replacement warranties to commercial customers, but they noted that this creates plenty of challenges. For example, these warranties are void if the plants aren't watered or cared for properly, but verifying how the plant was treated after being installed isn't easy.

"We'll ask the customer to bring us a sample of the tree, such as a branch," noted Billy Van Hyden, manager at John Deere Landscapes Alpharetta, Ga., location, adding that although he doesn't offer any written guarantee on wholesale materials, he will work to keep good customers satisfied.

Shemin Nurseries, on the other hand, offers a one-year warranty on plants, and they will occasionally send employees out to inspect a job site if the contractor blames poor plants. Some of the conditions attached to the warranty include waiving the warranty on "distressed or sale items," in addition to charging higher prices to cover the warranties. And employees at the facility report that they see competitors in the market following suit and offering their own warranties.

Not having control over what happens to the plant materials after they leave the nusery stand as the chief concern associated with such warranties. "There are still plenty of contractors who will show up, load their truck with plants and drive out of here without covering the truck with a tarp," noted one frustrated tour participant. "What do they think happens to plants being driven down the road at 45 miles an hour? And then they blame us when the plants aren't doing well."