CNGA LooseLeaf June/July 2019

3 colorad o nga.org LooseLeaf  June/July 2019 MESSAGE FROMTHE BOARD Planning your inventory in the nursery and greenhouse industry is a cross between money-ball, fortune telling, and scientific wild-a** guessing. It’s an inexact process to be sure, but the more times you go through it, you’ll begin to trust in your processes, and understand that your guesses sometimes work out great, and other times they come back to haunt you. You can look at many formal economic indicators to make some educated inferences about where our local, regional, national or world economies are heading. In addition, you can informally poll your customers—for those of us on the wholesale side, it can be as simple as asking contractors what their upcoming jobs look like. You can similarly talk with your suppliers or peers (competitors) to “take the pulse” of what trends are happening. Then there are your own sales records. Are there bulk trends you can see in your recent history to help guide your overall inventory levels? How are different categories within your offerings doing? On a detailed, plant-by-plant level you can look at: what plants sold well, how many others were left over at the end of your target selling time, and what you ran out of too early. Do some have better margins or turnaround time? Finally, there’s the matter of adding new plants, or even entire new lines of products—and it’s important to think about how they’ll fit with what you’re already good at. Many of us still have the memory of “The Great Recession,” and the glut of plant material that seemed to be everywhere. At the same time, the past few years have been a great seller’s market, and shortages have been the norm. Are we now at the top of the hill, with some sort of decline imminent? Or will growth just gradually slow down without a jarring drop off? Perhaps our growth cycle hasn’t run its course, and we will see continued strong demand for plant material. Regardless of which way things go, we’ve been fortunate in this region to be somewhat sheltered from some of the boom-bust cycles that are felt in other parts of the country. In the green industry, our products are perishable, and shelf-life is limited, but you surely can’t sell what you don’t have. Once you have a strategy and a vision that you believe in for what the future holds for your operation, it is time to “place your bets and take your chances” (as a wise nurseryman I know likes to say...). By Dan Wise, CCNP CNGA Board President Inventory Planning – Place Your Bets & Take Your Chances

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