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Gertens Inver Grove Heights, MN
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Top-ranking single-store independent talks about business on the grow
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Gertens isn’t just about garden retail - it’s about growing. Growing greenhouse and nursery plants. Growing a thriving retail garden center. Growing a repeat customer base. Growing the family’s once-modest operation into today’s largest single-store independent, with sales estimated at $32.6 million.
Located in Inver Grove Heights, MN, to the south of St. Paul, Gertens draws as many as 5,000 customers during a typical May day.
Throughout its tremendous growth, the prevailing focus has remained the same: customer satisfaction. Plants are a big part of this picture. The retailer, which grows its own stock, makes it a point to promote quality, value and selection to drive sales.
“We’ve always had a ‘buy from the grower and save’ approach in the marketplace,” says Partner Gino Pitera.
The retailer’s extensive selection in annuals, perennials, trees, shrubs and evergreens brings customers to make the trip to what he calls its “out-of-the-way” location.
Connecting the growing range to the garden center gives the independent an advantage because it demonstrates freshness to the customer, Pitera says.
“As growers, I think quality sets us apart,” he says.
Growing its own material also allows Gertens to stay well stocked. Even during its busiest days, the retailer doesn’t have to deal with low-inventory issues.
“You get some people who become disappointed because they can’t find the right color impatiens or the right daylily,” Pitera says. “They made the trip all the way out here, and if we don’t have it, they’re going someplace else that very day.”
As much as growing, showing is a big part of selling at Gertens. Plants are displayed so customers can easily reach them.
“The plant itself must be compelling, and the massive presentation must be compelling - so that there is no need to jazz up the presentation with artificial effects,” Pitera says.
More Than Plants
Described by Pitera as a full-line greenhouse, garden center, nursery and supply yard, Gertens takes the same approach with hard goods as it does with plants, offering an extensive assortment of quality goods in each category.
Service is another area where Gertens says it focuses on the customer. Its “landscape supply desk” in the garden center is stocked with samples, brochures and information.
“We have experts there to help with product selection,” Pitera says. “The yard where [customers] load up is down the block and across the street. [They] also can go there directly to set up a delivery or pick up materials.”
The retailer provides landscape design services but doesn’t handle full landscape or hardscape installations. It plants trees, including those in the larger-caliper range that are difficult for customers to handle.
Most of the retailer’s landscape designs are set up for the do-it-yourself customer, but they can be as extensive as they would be for a design/build customer.
“Sometimes a customer wants a landscape design so they can bid it out,” Pitera says. “They tell us they feel an independent plan doesn’t favor one company over another. They trust us to provide true help for the design that best fits their needs.”
Gertens’ staff is available to refer installation customers to a list of landscape contractors.
“Since the commercial side of our business services landscape contractors, we have a good list of reliable sources to offer,” Pitera says. “Though we don’t do the work, this is good business for us since the contractors will purchase the plants and most of the other materials from us.”
Gertens’ large-scale wholesale division accounts for approximately $9 million in product sales.
On the retail side, the independent’s Home & Garden Showplace affiliation gives it added muscle and advantage in its increasingly competitive marketplace.
“It’s especially helpful in terms of buying power, exposure to different product lines, help in distribution, help with point-of-sale and other systems,” Pitera says. “We believe in the co-op philosophy. There are a lot of benefits for independents who group together.”
The No. 1 asset Gertens has gained through its co-op affiliation is the ability to talk to other garden center operators and network, Pitera says.
“Some of the best things I’ve learned have been by visiting garden centers in which the owner reveals what he has done to solve a problem that we’re wrestling with at that very moment,” he says.
A True Destination
Though Gertens is off the beaten path, it is accessible by the network of highways that wind through the metroplex of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
“Our location used to be fairly out of the way,” Pitera says. “We were almost paranoid about being less accessible than other retailers. We now conclude that the relative remoteness is one of the things that helps make us a destination.”
Although the retailer may be out of the way, Pitera believes it is close enough to much of the area’s population that a visit to the garden center is worth the trip.
“By being out where the cost of land was relatively low, we were able to expand to our desired 100 acres,” Pitera says. “Not being in a strip mall, a power center or on a busy thoroughfare helps set us apart from the super stores and other merchants dominated by crass commercialism.”
Gertens’ growing ranges, the outdoor nursery sales area and the garden center are all in one location, on a 100-acre parcel.
“When a shopper steps onto our property, that person knows they are at a greenhouse/nursery/garden center,” Pitera says. “People have shown that they like that. Even today, in our eighth season, we look back and agree it turned out pretty well. We’re very happy with the results.”
He continues, “A little bit of magic occurs in the presentation to the customer with the scale of the growing operation and the plant quality and freshness. That’s what we’re all about.”
Behind the Scenes
Gertens started in the mid-1920s, when founder Frank Gerten began selling produce he grew on his small farm. Gradually, greenhouses were added and the focus turned to ornamental and nursery plants.
Pitera, son-in-law of the founder, was joined by two of Frank’s sons, Lew and Glen, to form the trio of owner/managers who spearhead the independent’s growth.
Lew heads up the greenhouse growing operation; Glen oversees the nursery growing business; and Pitera handles the retailing, contractor sales and administration.
“I grew up working in greenhouses - not here but for others - from the age of 13,” Pitera says. “We grew vegetables. It wasn’t like nursery stock or growing annuals in those greenhouses, but it was a form of horticulture.”
Pitera joined Gertens in the fall of 1987, about 10 years before the operation got into retail. At the time, the company’s facilities were modest.
Then, in 1997, Gertens underwent a major expansion and renovation.
“It was typical of the evolution of many growers, in that the greenhouses we grew in became our retailing facilities,” Pitera says. “We were resourceful, doing a lot with some structural impediments that we had to overcome. The structure was more suited for a growing house than a retail building. We were limited on how we could expand with the facilities we had.”
None of Gertens’ management trio has formal education in management. Pitera studied marketing at the University of Minnesota. Lew and Glen worked in small business and learned through on-the-job experience.
“We don’t have ‘textbook’ backgrounds in retailing either,” Pitera says. “Each one of us is different. Lew, Glen and I are three distinctively different personalities, and we have three different management techniques. What we share is a long involvement in horticulture and in focusing on pleasing the customer.”
The team’s division of responsibilities doesn’t follow a specific plan or design; it adjusts to different needs as the company grows.
“Each one of us took an area because it needed extra focus,” Pitera notes. “The expansion made everyone focus on their areas a little more.”
Every week, Pitera, Glen and Lew conduct major management discussions over an informal breakfast.
“It’s something we’ve done for as long as I can remember,” Pitera says. “We go to the same joint, and it’s always on Thursday, unless we have a scheduling conflict. Of course, we do hold more formal meetings, individually and together with key staff members on specific topics. But our big-picture issues get hashed out in these informal breakfast meetings.”
Growing the Business
Plans for Gertens’ renovation were developed during a period of about three years. During the expansion, the company’s management team would hear that another business was doing something of interest somewhere, and one or two people from the team would make a trip to check it out. They reviewed the businesses that had gone up locally and got ideas from them.
“We kept gathering information, trying to decide what best suited us and what was available,” Pitera says. “We almost built in 1995 but the project bid came in over budget. We waited until 1996, trimmed a few things, and found the price hadn’t changed even with the cuts. That was the wake-up call we needed to stop agonizing and just go forward.”
The managers knew it would be a drastic change, but they also knew they wanted to keep some of the character and history in the new expansion.
“Our existing facilities were modest, and we didn’t want the new place to look like someone had bought the company and changed it,” Pitera says.
Because the business is focused on plants, it was important to make sure the new facility had key greenhouse features - venting, shading and floor drains - to do a good job of retailing plants. Those details were a key part of the infrastructure.
The project also included expansion of the growing range for the greenhouse, nursery and outdoor selling space. The company wanted more area dedicated to shrubs, trees and perennials, and more covered space for sales.
Part of the renovation process involved creating an environment that appealed to upper-middle-class women.
“We were well aware that a lot of trips to garden centers were made by ladies,” Pitera says, “so we wanted to make sure a woman would be comfortable shopping here.”
He continues, “That doesn’t mean the colors are all pastels - just that the standards of the facility are such that a lady would have a pleasant shopping experience.”
The management team decided to do the construction and continue operating in the old facilities at the same time. They didn’t tear down the building that was the main retailing operation, but they did remove some growing structures on the property.
Pulling It All Together
In discussing Gertens’ growing success, Pitera points to the importance of a strong staff in maintaining the retailer’s high standards.
“I don’t always look for someone with the most experience or the best background in horticulture, though those things help,” Pitera says. “More than anything, I try to look for a good person who has a good work ethic. I try to interview the heart rather than the head. If the heart’s in the right place, they can learn everything else. It’s helped me build a great staff. That’s probably the biggest secret to the success of this place.”
The Gertens management team understands there’s something special about offering customers the whole package and caring about what they deliver.
“I’m walking around in the garden center every day I’m at work, interacting with our customers and our employees,” Pitera says. “Lew and Glen have the same hands-on, front-line approach to overseeing the greenhouse and nursery production segments of the business. We don’t want a customer to have a bad experience.
“We have a little bit of paranoia - a fear of letting our customer down - that keeps us humble,” Pitera says.
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