The recent Mailorder Gardening Association conference featured three speakers who addressed the future of the garden market. Chief among their points was the importance of learning to market to Gen X and Gen Y.
After the talks, I was speaking with the owner of a well-known perennial catalog, one that does a superb job of marketing to the traditional Baby Boomer market. I asked if he was considering implementing any of the suggestions that had just been discussed. “Well, we’ve thought about it,” he replied, “but we just have so many other things to do, and you can’t do everything.”
It’s a common and understandable attitude. Yet it could be a fatal mistake. Take a look at how the population breaks down, coupled with how much each group spends in the lawn & garden category:
|
Age range |
% of US population |
Average annual spend on lawn & garden |
|
18-34 |
30% |
$229 |
|
35-44 |
18% |
$461 |
|
45-54 |
20% |
$454 |
|
55+ |
31% |
$546 |
Those 55+ Baby Boomers have been our bread and butter. They’re now downsizing their living spaces, moving to smaller properties. Aches and pains make digging and bending harder than it used to be. Shrinking portfolios may mean they’ll be working longer and gardening less than they’d like. For a whole variety of reasons, it’s not realistic to expect growth to come from this sector.
Gen X’s (most of those 35-44 fall into this category) not only spend less than the older Boomers, but there are far fewer of them. Even if their spending equaled that of the older Boomers, sales from this group would still be headed for a more than 40% drop based on the smaller size of this market.
Gen Y rebounds in terms of size, but our marketing will have to change radically in order to speak to them. Gardening isn’t a pastime for them, it’s a project. They don’t know the difference between an annual and a perennial, and what’s more, they don’t care. They want instant success, not hours of learning and trial-and-error. The media they use is not what we consider traditional – even email is becoming outmoded. For a whole host of reasons, we need to master a whole new approach in order to reach this group. More on that in future posts.
