The right place, the right time and the right plan

By GLENN CHEATER
Being in the right place at the right time is hugely helpful, but that alone is no guarantee of success.
Consider Wildflower Farm, a wildflower nursery and natural landscaping business located in Coldwater in central Ontario. Husband-and-wife owners Paul Jenkins and Miriam Goldberger have spent more than 20 years building up this business, which is perfectly poised to cash in on a pair of already hot but soon-to-be-hotter trends-the move towards natural plants and the move away from expensive and environmentally iffy lawn and garden maintenance.
"It's a bad pun, but I say it all the time-we've built this business on a grassroots basis," says Jenkins. "We are convinced this is going to be huge."
Jenkins is talking specifically about Eco-Lawn, a fescue mix he created which rarely needs watering or fertilizing and doesn't have to be mowed. It's one of the reasons why the farm's sales have been growing at a 20% annual clip (save for the recession last year) and why Jenkins is hoping to break the $2-million mark in sales this year.
No, 'hoping' is the wrong word. Jenkins and Goldberger are prepared.
Their business started off as a hobby back in 1988 when the couple (she was in public relations, he in graphic design and printing) moved to an acreage north of Toronto.
"If we had planned to farm, we would have looked for things like good water and soil," Jenkins notes wryly. "Instead we picked a place with wonderful views and some of the worst concrete clay soils in the province of Ontario."
That's what got them interested in native plants-they were the only things that grew well in the crummy soil. First came a small sideline selling dried native wildflowers, then Goldberger decided to open an on-farm store.
"I was reticent," admits Jenkins. "I thought, 'You're going to waste a whole bunch of your time talking to old ladies who might spend $5.' "
Jenkins was wrong-more than 200 people showed up the first day of business.
Next up was holding seminars for landscape architects on low-maintenance landscaping. Corporations and governments spend a lot of money on watering, fertilizing, cutting and weeding the grounds around their buildings. The couple rightly figured landscape architects would go for a more beautiful alternative with dramatically lower ongoing costs, but also knew it was a slow way to generate business.
"It's a three- to five-year process before someone decides to build a building, builds it, and the landscaping starts going in," notes Jenkins.
But the couple are masters of patiently laying the groundwork for future success.
Go to www.wildflowerfarm.com and you'll find about 450 pages of information on wildflowers, native grass seeds, what flowers attract butterflies and which ones hummingbirds, what grows in clay soils and what tolerates drought, and on and on. Phone in the crazy busy spring planting season and you won't get voice mail but an actual human being-the couple hires five operators for the spring just to answer customer queries. These are key reasons why 75% of the farm's sales come via its website.
It's the same pattern on the Eco-Lawn side. Jenkins spent several years testing various mixes and three years in trials before he started selling it 12 years ago. As with his wildflower meadow landscaping business, he has very detailed site preparation and establishment guidelines to ensure it lives up to its billing.
At $35 for a five-pound bag, customers expect great results. But happy customers make great sales reps. Jenkins says that's why retailers (they have more than 120 retailers in nine provinces and six states) approach them offering to sell Eco-Lawn.
"We track customers by postal and zip codes," says Jenkins. "So you sell a bag to someone in Red Deer or in Connecticut, and the next year you see their neighbours are ordering it. Then they start going to garden stores and asking why they don't stock Eco-Lawn."
That strong customer loyalty is proving to be critical.
A dozen years ago, Jenkins approached the big retailers about selling Eco-Lawn and got nowhere. Today, several stock "a cheap Chinese knock-off" with a similar name that sells for half the price.
It's probably selling like hotcakes but it's not-and this is critical-killing Wildflower Farm's sales. All the years of backend work and servicing-some might say over-servicing-have built a rock-solid foundation under the business.
Now that their time has arrived, Jenkins and Goldberger aren't about to be muscled aside by Johnny-come-latelies.
This is something farm entrepreneurs should remember, whether they're selling local food, pitching agri-tourism, developing a custom farming sideline or seed business. It's great if you find yourself in a suddenly hot sector, but it's even better if you've built the kind of business that stands out in a crowd.
(Glenn Cheater is editor of the Canadian Farm Manager, the newsletter of the Canadian Farm Business Management Council. The newsletter as well as archived columns from this series can be found in the News Desk section at www.farmcentre.com)