Bower & Branch to Host Midwest Event
The Bower & Branch team will be in the Chicago area on Nov. 16 holding a roundtable event titled “Empowered! Taking Over Online, Before It Overtakes You!”
“This is directed to independent garden retailers who would like to know more about protecting and defending their customer base, while attracting new customers to their stores using existing and harnessed power of the Internet,” said Sid Raisch, president & CEO of Bower & Branch, a network of growers and 55 independent garden retailers located throughout the northeast and eastern midwest.
The Bower & Branch roundtable event is all about independent retailers coming together to learn how to effectively get in front of their customers’ movement online.
Raisch said, “We have to take action to prevent further erosion of customer traffic and it’s the perfect opportunity to begin to take back the over 80 percent of the business that has already been lost to box stores. We have proven hundreds of times over that consumers are ready to buy online for in-store pickup of trees and topiary, as well as, home delivery and planting that most of our members offer. The risk has been assessed and the water is clear and warm.”
This free Empowered! event will be held at the Eaglewood Resort in Itasca, Illinois, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Tom Hilgeman, former general manager of White Oak Gardens in Cincinnati, recently joined the Bower & Branch team and will be presenting about his experiences as a garden center that has gone online.
“Our staff learned to enjoy the freedom from having all the extra inventory to take care of, all of it was online for them. The profitability of our tree category skyrocketed when we simply stopped unloading, storing, watering, caring for and discounting trees we didn’t need to have in the first place,” said Hilgeman. “This is why I joined the Bower & Branch team.”
For more information or to register, visit www.igcsuccess.com.
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