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Greetings!
In a few days summer will officially be over even though the temperatures tell a different story. With the passing of Labor Day, all thoughts turn to fall and its surrounding activities.
For those of you who weren't able to make it to the TNLA Expo in Houston, we missed you! It was a great three days, we were busy promoting each of you and our Association! . Thanks to Bruce Miller Nursery, Ran-Pro Farms, Casa Flora, Nortex Farms, and J.
Berry Nursery for providing the plant material for our booth. Congratulations to two of our members who were honored at this year's Expo. The TNLA 2016 Honorary Lifetime Award was given to Shirley Staples of Certified Roses and the TNLA 2016 ARP Award was give to Bob Cartwright of Ran-Pro Farms.
We will be starting on our 2017 Buyers Guide in the next few weeks. I will be contacting each of you to verify the info
rmation in your listing to make sure we are current and up to date.
Our 2017 Trade Show is coming together nicely. We have adjusted the hours and added more educational programs to encourage larger attendance. We are also working on different ways to help promote each of the exhibitors at the show. There are sponsorship opportunities at different levels available to promote your brand and expand your business. If any of you have suggestions or if you are willing to help in any way, please let me know.
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5 Nuggets of Wisdom from Cultivate '16
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Learning something new fires me up like nothing else does. I stockpile bits of knowledge and curious facts with the zeal of a compulsive hoarder cramming paraphernalia into a too-small room. No amount of knowledge is too much. I know I'll need it eventually.
Tantamount to a knowledge-lover's candy store, shelves jam-packed with nuggets of wisdom, Cultivate'16 stood out for me this year. I returned with heaps of new ideas and thoughts to mull over in the next few months. For the sake of brevity, I picked five sweet pieces of Cultivate wisdom I brought home with me to share with you.
1. Consumers search plant attributes over plant names. Seth Reed and Mason Day shared information on consumer behavior mined from their popular Grow It! app during their "What Consumers are Telling Us About Plants" presentation. They discovered that 1,768,683 consumers searched the app by plant attributes, compared to 183,388 searches by plant name. Their pro tip - grouping plants A to Z makes no sense; group by use or feature.
2. It's a good time to invest, if . . . Growers and suppliers received the green light to invest - with a caveat. "Start by making your operation more efficient," Charlie Hall, economist by training and a Professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M University, said during his State of the Industry talk. "Increase margins by 10%, then replicate that model."
3. We make our businesses better when we are in the business of making people better. This treasure was just one of many from keynote speaker and leadership expert Jeremy Kingsley's talk "Inspired People Produce Inspired Results."
"Inspiring your people is the key to unlocking your team's potential," Kingsley said. "Your ability to inspire makes you more than a manager, it makes you a leader."
4. If you only stay at your place of business, you'll always think your ideas are the best. Art Van Wingerden urged growers to visit other grower operations and see what other industries are doing at Greenhouse Grower's Top 100 Growers Breakfast. The CEO and co-owner of Metrolina Greenhouses said he always learns something new when he travels, and it opens his mind to new ideas and possibilities.
5. We are not selling plants, we are selling a lifestyle. Albert Grimm loves his job - not only because of what he does every day, but because of what it means to other people. During
Greenhouse Grower's Evening of Excellence, the
2016 Head Grower Of The Year, who oversees Jeffery's Greenhouses, said that by selling a lifestyle, we make a difference in people's lives and improve their days.
article taken from:Greenhouse Grower Magazine
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Did you know there are multiple ways to advertise in the newsletter?
Call 903-272-0145 for pricing
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News and Articles
from the Green Industry
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How You Can Stop Aphids By Understanding Their Interactions With Plants
by Raymond Cloyd
Aphids are major insect pests of many greenhouse-grown horticultural crops, including ornamentals and vegetables. In general, aphids tend to select certain plants and even cultivars over others. Why is that? The primary reason may be attributed to the nutritional quality or nutrient content of plants.
For example, chrysanthemum (Dendranthema x grandiflorum) cultivars may vary in their susceptibility to aphids, such as the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae), primarily due to the nutritional quality of specific cultivars. In fact, the nutritional quality or nutrient content of a plant and cultivar may be strongly correlated with susceptibility,
.. read more
Dearth of a salesman - How do you find the right staff to sell your services?
by Marty Grunder
A couple issues back I wrote about the biggest mistakes I have made while growing my landscaping company, one of which was not hiring a salesperson soon enough. I thought I had to do all the selling myself, but now that I have a talented sales team in place, I see the error of my ways. So to spare you the pain and time of having to learn this lesson through your own trials and tribulations, I would like to share with you some of the best ways to find, hire, and train a new salesperson for your team.
read more
How Bad Plant Pricing Can Hurt A Good Retailer
by Carol Miller
When Greenhouse Grower RETAILING sent a pricing survey to the industry, we put the most important question at the top of our survey: How do you calculate plant prices?
One of the experts we recruited to help make sense of the responses, Dr. Charlie Hall (Texas A&M), looked at all the ways plant retailers say they calculate plant prices. At first glance, the methods were all over the board, but Dr. Hall sifted through the replies and was able to sort them into four main groups.
read more
How Fall Can Be About More Than Pansies
by Allen Armitage
There are so many silly dogmas to be smashed that sometimes I don't know where to start. Toads cause warts. Black cats are bad luck. Avoid Friday the 13th, and only pansies and mums make money in the fall.
I am not sure where some of these beliefs and superstitions arose, nor can I believe that anyone in this industry still adheres to the last one. People have been writing about enhancing fall sales since forever, so why am I reinventing the wheel?
Perhaps because the more I plant shop, the more frustrated I get. So much is predicated on impulse.read more
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Thursday, September 8, 2016
TNLA Region III Meeting
(NTNGA members are invited to attend)
Cancelled due to lack of RSVP's
Thursday, Friday, September 29,30, 2016
Oklahoma Nursery & Landscape Association
Tradeshow and Convention
Cox Convention Center, Oklahoma City, OK
If you know of any events in your area, or if you are hosting an event, please let me know and we can post it here.
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As we "fall" into a new season of activities, don't forget to enjoy the abundance of summer.
Charlotte
Charlotte Yorkson
Executive Director
Northeast Texas Nursery Growers Association
903-272-0145
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