E-commerce entrepreneurs create an Eden for gardeners on the Web.
When Cliff and Lisa Sharples moved to Austin, Texas, in 1995
and bought their first home, they really wanted a garden to show off their
abode. Around the same time, the pair -- both of whom had technology
backgrounds -- were also watching the Internet explode around them, and
contemplating the idea of entrepreneurship at the same time. Who knew that
these interests would collide simultaneously to form a thriving e-commerce
business?
“We were really interested in the electronic commerce model,
and our home was in bad need of gardening,” recalls Cliff Sharples. “Lisa came
up with the idea of gardening on the Web.” Lisa Sharples continues: “We wanted
a garden at our new house, but we didn’t know how to do it. So I asked Cliff,
'Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a Web site where you could enter your
preferences, tell it where you live, and get recommendations for appropriate
plants -- then push a button to buy it all?'”
With that vision in mind, and no such source available on
the Web, the Sharples founded their business, Garden.com,
on -- appropriately enough -- the first day of spring in 1996. The couple's
partners in the venture included Jamie O’Neill and Andy Martin, who rounded out
the team whose vision was to harness the power of the Internet to build the
first, all-inclusive national gardening company -- one that would enable real
people to grow their own gardens. The team paid $2,500 to purchase the rights
to use the “garden.com” URL, and launched the site, which today is what Lisa Sharples
refers to as a “category leader.”
To get their nascent firm off the ground, the Garden.com
team raised seed money of $750,000 in November 1995. (Today, the company
founders share equity with a number of venture capitalists, including Austin
Ventures, Phillips-Smith Specialty Retail Group, Oak Investment Partners and
Scripps Ventures.)
As team players at a fledgling company, Lisa Sharples says
she and her co-workers were initially very focused on selling “an exhaustive
list of high quality products to the home gardener.” What they found out,
however, was that novice gardeners needed more. While the experienced gardener
could punch in keywords to find what they wanted, newer gardeners needed
solutions and advice. To solve the problem, Garden.com placed its focus on
content, content, content. “We hired the executive garden editor of Better Homes and Gardens, Doug
Jimerson,” says Lisa Sharples. “We explained to him that we really needed to
provide inspiration and information -- in electronic format -- so that a novice
gardener could come online, read an article about peonies, and feel like they
really understand the product line. From there, they can be comfortable with
their ability to make a more educated purchasing decision.”
And the strategy stuck. Today, Garden.com employs an
8-person publishing team that generates the content, photography and writing
for the site.
“We’re using editorial as a way to ensure that our customers
are selecting the right products, have more information, and feel more educated
about what they’re doing,” Lisa Sharples says.
According to Lisa Sharples, in traditional media, separation
of “information vs. selling” is vital. As a result, she says, magazines are
hesitant to point readers to a specific product vendor. But when Garden.com
conducted focus groups on the issue, they found that their customers -- most of
whom are home gardeners -- are considerably frustrated with that train of
thought. She explains: “They need someone to not only explain what they should
be planting, but where to get it. We saw an opportunity there and took
advantage of it by launching a brand-new print publication -- the very first
magazine publication to be created by an electronic commerce company -- called Garden Escape, which serves as a
portable version of our Web site.”
The magazine features full-page photos, along with pricing
and ordering information for all plants, flowers and products on adjacent
pages, effectively tying content and commerce into one neat package.
“From a business-model perspective, our company is a
retailer, and is all about selling product,” says Cliff Sharples, company
president and CEO. “Customers, however, don’t want just a store out of their
Garden.com experience. They want a blend of content, community and commerce. We
use content and community as the ‘sticky’ side of the Web site, then we place
commerce under it all. There’s a commerce element to everything on the site.”
For example, he says, everything in the Garden.com Magazine portion of the Web site -- from the photos to
the plants mentioned in the article -- is hyperlinked to the company’s
selection of gardening plants and products. “This really allows our editorial
team to be fairly editorially-neutral,” says Cliff Sharples. “For instance,
because they’re working so far ahead, our editor might say,
‘Next fall, I want to do a story on a new variety of bulbs.’ He’ll then
approach the merchandising team and ask them to find those bulbs so they’re
available for purchase by the time his story goes live.”
Since starting the company, the founding foursome has opened
offices in Des Moines, Iowa, and San Francisco, Calif., and hired a host of
other employees who make up the now-102-person Garden.com team, which
encompasses gardening and landscape experts, Internet pioneers and
customer-solutions representatives. The Garden.com product line has grown, as
well, and now offers more than 15,000 brand-name planting materials, seasonal
collections, supplies (including tools, seeds, bulbs, plants, trees, books and
software) and garden-inspired gifts. Products come from 50 suppliers, many of
which ship orders directly to customers. In addition, the site also features regionally customized news, chat areas,
a plant finder (which suggests plants based on location and preferences) and a
garden planner.
Commenting on the diverse offerings on the site, Lisa
Sharples, chief marketing officer, says: “What makes us different is that we’re
providing a link between best-in-class growers and consumers. We seek out, for
example, the best peony grower in the country, then deliver the full product
line in electronic format online. Visitors come to our site to buy peonies, and
they get them from the best grower in the country. Basically, we’re delivering
our products and services in a one-stop-shop format, which allows the home
grower to find really unique products that they couldn’t find in their local
nursery or in a catalog.”
In terms of competition, Lisa Sharples says Garden.com has
yet to meet up with any true competitors online. “There are gardening companies
that have done a great job of putting their catalogs online, like Burpee,” she
says. “But they focus solely on their product line, which is very narrowly
defined, relative to what we’re offering.”
At Garden.com, a free membership program serves as the basis
for all of the firm’s customer-retention programs, and has done so since
startup. Because gardeners are planners by nature -- even from a pure shopping
perspective -- Garden.com tried to emulate the experience of ordering from
gardening catalogs, writing out lists, and planning the look and feel of a
garden.
Cliff Sharples explains: “It’s not a quick purchase process.
Because of this, we need a way for people to save their shopping carts [or
‘wheelbarrow’] from session to session, so we created a membership program
right away.”
As a non-member on the Garden.com site, visitors can do just
about everything that a member can, except save their information and take
advantage of the Garden Doctor, a feature that allows members to seek advice on
specific questions via e-mail. “It’s a pretty cool service that’s heavily
used,” says Cliff Sharples of the Garden Doctor. “We get anywhere from 800 to
900 e-mails a day total, 40 to 50 percent of which are gardening problem
questions.”
The site also features a Java-based garden-planning software
called Garden Planner, which allows visitors to bring up standard templates,
customize them by region and design their own gardens.
In
1999 about 1 percent to 7 percent of Garden.com’s total
monthly visitors made an average purchase of $60. But before the company could
get customers to start filling those wheelbarrows and handing over their credit
card numbers, its management team had to make people aware of the site's
existence. At the outset, Lisa Sharples says the company tried various
marketing tactics to get its name out to the masses. From banner ads to
strategic relationships with partners like AOL
and Yahoo! to traditional media like TV and
radio. The company also targeted several National Public Radio and television
shows, including the sponsorship of two PBS shows.
“We’ve also done a few direct-mail campaigns,” says Lisa
Sharples. “The nice thing about the Internet is that you can really try a lot
of things from a marketing perspective and truly measure each program’s success
based on the traffic delivered to your site, and where it comes from. Then you
do more of it, or less, depending on how effective it is.”
Visitors who frequent Garden.com are treated to an eyeful of
graphics and content, but what they don’t see are the behind-the-scenes
mechanisms that keep this complex Web site running smoothly. For every piece of
information that can be viewed on the site, Lisa Sharples says there exists
about “three times that amount of technology on the backend.” That back-end
system not only handles the overall support of the business, but it also allows
suppliers to manage their orders electronically and update Garden.com, in real
time, on the status of specific orders.
Because the company itself carries only a small amount of
inventory -- primarily on the gift side of the business -- a Garden.com
customer who makes a purchase of 20 items, for instance, may receive the
products from three different suppliers. And orchestrating the ordering,
shipping and delivery processes with suppliers has been a difficult task.
“Because we’re linking unique and distinct suppliers, and we
currently have over 70 suppliers who are drop shipping products to individual
home gardeners, it’s a challenge to make the customer experiences a seamless,
one-stop-shopping experience,” Lisa Sharples comments. “To overcome this
problem, we’ve assembled a technology that allows the home gardener to log on
and see exactly where their order is.”
According to Cliff Sharples, his company has “invested
heavily" in customer service. “We actually call it Customer Solutions at
Garden Escape,” he says. “And we man our phones in a 24-hour time fashion; we
answer e-mails in a 24-hour turnaround time.”
“[Customer service] is really our front line of defense to
make sure customers have a good experience," echoes Lisa Sharples.
To that end, the company guarantees all of its plants and
products against defect, faulty workmanship and loss through shipping, with a
money-back assurance. In fact, the site claims that if, for any reason, a
shipment isn't satisfactory, the company "will gladly replace it, refund
your money, or give you a 110% credit toward your next garden.com
purchase."
According to Ms. Sharples, Garden.com’s biggest plan for the
future involves the company’s commitment to becoming a household name in
gardening. "We're trying to build one of the largest gardening brands in
America, and we’re using the information technology and the Internet to get
there. It's certainly our distinct channel of distribution, though we believe
that in the gardening industry there's never really been a category killer, a
leader in this industry. We think that information systems and the Internet is
really the way to do it.”
“From a company perspective, we have to keep a pulse on our
customer, and make sure we understand them intimately and know exactly what
they want,” Sharples adds. “As the Internet evolves, and they become more
sophisticated at using this medium, they’re going to require more and more
technology to keep up with their changing needs.”
Company: Garden.com
URL: www.garden.com
Founder: Cliff Sharples, Lisa Sharples, Andy Martin
and Jamie O’Neill
Industry: Online gardening products and supplies
Location: Austin, Texas
Employees: 102
Revenues: undisclosed
Copyright © 2000 by Virtual
Advisor, Inc. All rights reserved.