“To me, every order needs to be a success. We pre-price the order and if I don’t feel that the pre-price matches the product, I add something to the order to make sure the client is happy,” says Evie Lynn, president, and CEO of Eve’s Garden Inc. The Florida-based company is a family-owned wholesale plant nursery in operation since 1979. Eve’s Garden Inc. specializes in gift plants and kits, which it provides to mass-market retailers, garden centers, florists, and plant brokers.
With a mission to design unique and affordable decorative products, Evie says that she is always mulling over new ideas and even dreams about them at night, waking up to write the ideas down before she can forget them. The nursery works with factories in Europe and Asia, many of them also family-run, to produce unique containers and ship them back to the US. Thanks to her team’s close watch of the market during the early days of the pandemic, Evie says that the nursery was able to avoid supply chain issues to keep their existing clients happy while also taking on new clients. Eve’s Garden Inc. was also able to thwart labor shortages as some of the team lives on-site and enlisted their families’ help.
“Our staff has been here for a number of years and they also brought in their families. We also set up computers for the kids to do their homework,” says Evie.
Designing for grocery store-specific products
Evie speaks passionately about the need to develop products specifically geared to the retailer type and consumers. Taking the example of grocery stores, she explains that many nurseries specializing in decorative plants sell the same product in grocery stores and home improvement stores. Despite grocery stores seeing hundreds of customers every day, decorative plants often stay on the shelves as the customer opts to purchase them at a lower price from home improvement stores. To mitigate this, Evie works with numerous grocery chains to provide diverse, stylish products of higher value than what the customer would see in a home improvement store.
“I think that buyers get scared because they see floral products staying on the shelves. But this isn’t because of what’s going on in the world; it’s because consumers are bombarded with the same products every day. They want to see something new. When they look at a product with three plants instead of one, they have to do a second take,” Evie explains.
Increased demand for bonsais, air plants, succulents
According to Evie, the market has seen an increased demand for bonsais, air plants, succulents, and cacti. The increased demand for bonsais was particularly interesting as growing bonsai has historically been a male-dominated hobby. With more bonsai sales, Evie figures that more men are getting involved in decorative gardening. Overall, the uptick in demand is likely linked to customers’ efforts to redecorate their homes and working spaces during the lockdown.
To Evie, the key to meeting customers’ demands is keeping track of emerging trends and being wholly involved in the nursery operation. At Eve’s Garden Inc., the team is passionate about what they do. The company is devoted to providing its clients and the end consumer with high-quality products. No bait-and-switch. No broken containers.
“Retailers need to work with conscientious nurseries that aren’t just out to buy mass-produced products. The Mom-and-Pop companies are the ones that you want to go with because they have a passion for this,” says Evie.
For more information:
Eve’s Garden Inc.
www.evesgardeninc.com