In 2008, California-based Armstrong Garden Centers closed their 20-year-old Thousand Oaks store and opened a new one catering to Gen X customers on the same site. The first year results are impressive:
While sales at other Armstrong Garden Centers declined 7%, the Gen X store boosted sales by a hefty 33%. That’s roughly double the results from other reworked stores that Armstrong has opened in the past.
You can read about some of the changes that accounted for the lift in this Garden Chic article. While they’re specific to a retail store setting, many of the same concepts could be adapted for a catalog or online format. I have yet to see a direct marketer of plants do a really superb job of marketing to the Gen X customer, but there’s clearly a lot of potential there for the company that gets it right.
