People, plants and hardware make a powerful impression on a business

My Skinner Nurseries branch in Garland, Texas, finally opened for business in March.

I’d like to express my appreciation to the fine folks at Oncor for taking time out of their busy schedules to throw the switch and turn our power on. That’s been a real boost to our productivity. Thanks, y’all.

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So once we became a functioning nursery with actual Thomas Edison technology in place, the customers started coming in. And they were impressed.

With me? “Hey, you’re the cartoon guy on the back page of NMPRO that looks like he just won a pie-eating contest!”

No. They were impressed with this site, our inventory and the people who work here.

Greetings, friend

We have a staff of 10, and I must be living right. I feel like these people fell out of heaven and landed in my lap. Each is smart, hard working and shows up every morning with enthusiasm.

I know this makes an impression on customers when they arrive. They’re immediately greeted (sometimes pounced upon) by an employee with a sincere desire to help.

This isn’t the case at every wholesale nursery in the Dallas area. So when it happens here, people notice.

Sure, it’s going to be a challenge to keep this up as we get busier, but that’s what we do at Skinner. Customer service is our thing. I trained at the Lewisville, Texas, location and saw them greet every customer despite doing $1 million in business per month.

Vendor appreciation

I’d also like to thank all the nurseries that provided our inventory for our opening. We were demanding, and they delivered.

We wanted nothing but A-plus-grade material when people first came through our gate. And from the 200-gallon shade trees provided by the Skinner farms in Florida to the flats of groundcovers, the plants looked fantastic. Customers noticed and commented on the quality.

We also asked for favors from our vendors. We knew cash flow would be a problem for our brand-new site. Our suppliers responded with special pricing, free freight and extended terms. They also offered to pitch in and help with our grand-opening celebration.

Believe me, we would not have been able to get off the ground without the support of these companies.

The right stuff

What also impressed customers were some of the features we installed when we built the nursery.

We erected a tarping station out of four 20-foot telephone poles placed on 15-by-30-foot spacing.

They have pulleys at the top and ropes to hoist tarps and drop them down on trailers. It’s simple, but it’s a huge timesaver. Customers get tarped and out the gate quickly, without damaging trees in the process.

We found a location for the tarping station near the office, but where it wouldn’t get in the way of trucks. I considered building a movable tarping device on wheels, but thought the fixed station would get more use.

Plus we can hang a “tarps for sale” sign on it, and maybe the station will actually help push add-on sales.

Customers have also been impressed with our pipe-and-cable system used to keep our container trees upright. It’s a design we stole from Glueck Tree Farm in Cat Spring, Texas.

Steel pipe was pile driven into the ground (three pipes in a triangle formation), welded with reinforcement pipe and cable was strung between them. Think of it as the most heavy-duty, over-engineered clothesline you’ve ever seen.

To top off the hanger system, all the trees are held in place with Velcro tree collars manufactured by High Caliper Growing Systems. These are about $3.50 each, and we bought thousands of them.

But they’ve already weathered many spring storms. I’m very pleased with how they’re preventing blow over and protecting the trees.

And the customers are impressed with how neat, healthy and tidy our container tree inventory is. That makes the whole system worth the investment.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to pay our electric bill.

Editor’s note: I visited Todd’s new location for its grand opening gala, and he gave me an all-access tour of his new home. He’s not joking about the strength of the pipe-and-cable system. We’d had a strong storm the night before and every tree was still upright that morning.

- Jyme

“Darkness”

It sure should have been our fine hour,

Shipping woody trees and shrubs and flowers.

But we were having no fun.

We could not sell plant one,

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Until Oncor turned on the danged power.

- Todd Davis

June 2008