3: Which standard-sizes should I grow?
by Jeroen Pertijs___
To answer this question, you should ask yourself two important questions:
- Who are my (potential) customers?
- What’s possible at my containerfields?
Profile your customers
To determine who your customers are, you have to make a profile of them. How? Follow these steps:
- Pick your 10 best customers and write them down. Each one of them on another piece of paper.
- Answer the following questions about them:
- In which country / countries do they operate?
- In what type of region are they located? (city/urban or town/rural)
- What type of consuming-audience do your customers have?
(Young, old, classy, casual, hip, trendy, traditional, etc.) - What’s popular in their region?
- Combine the given answers and make a ‘profile’ of the consuming-customer. For example:
“French mid-aged traditional people living in suburban environments” - Translate this profile to nurserymen language, like: “French people with a small to medium-sized garden who are willing to spend an hour a week in their garden”
- Now determine what type of standards these consumers would buy. For this specific example, I would say that they would buy 3 to 5 standards from 80cm high up to just one standard with a maximum standard height of 200cm.
As Bonus Material this week, I made up a list of different types of profiles for different European countries with corresponding standard heights.
If you want to receive this bonus material by e-mail, please SUBSCRIBE to this blog. I think it might be very useful to translate your customer profiles into market opportunities!
Your practical possibilities
Even though market chances are the prior reason why you should grow particular standard-sizes, never forget your passion. Ask yourself: “What do I want to grow? What fits my vision about my business? What’s my ambition?” Because of that vision/ambition you have, you already have a certain design with particular divisions at your container field.
In many cases, switching completely to another type of container field isn’t an option. So besides the market opportunities, determine what’s possible at your nursery, contingent with small adjustments.
Next week we’ll discuss the following issue: “What quantities should I grow to meet the demand?” It will be an interesting chapter in which I will explain how you could use Google Trends to predict your market!
If you’d like to read it on the first hand, please SUBSCRIBE to Pertop’s Blog!