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CHICAGO -- One of the buzzwords in magazines and at the trade shows this year was "relevance." Relevance to your customer, relevance to the new demographic profile of the garden center market, relevance to the future homeowner. So let's look at some characteristics of that new consumer so you can run your own relevance test.

Target generation profile:

Meet Mr and Mrs I. Pod

He is 30; she's 28. They met at college, married two years ago and their pride and joy is a wild but totally cute 1-year-old Tibetan terrier. Like many in their generation, they plan life very carefully. They acquired the puppy so she has time to calm down by the time their first baby, scheduled for early 2009, comes along.

Finances: Meanwhile, they are building capital through hard work. She is a billing manager in the health care industry; he is a software engineer with a cell phone company. When married they combined savings, cars, apartments, furniture and college loans into one portfolio, with which they bought a house currently worth about $280,000. Their household income is well above the nation's average at $72,000.

Store preferences: They happily one-stop shop at Target, support Whole Foods and love Starbucks (where she bought some music CDs for gifts this year). They are national brand driven, but also use what they see as specialty stores like Ulta, Anthroplogie or Cabellas.

Inside, their house decor mixes IKEA, Pottery Barn, Linens and Things, online catalogs and sometimes Tuesday Morning. Outside are contractor basics with color from Lowe's and furniture by "Tarzhay" (Target).

Indulgences: She has her hair and nails done monthly, with an occasional pampering at a Sephora cosmetics counter. He loves music, learning to play acoustic guitar with a tutor once a week. They don't eat in much, meeting friends at a cool restaurant or a local sushi bar after work. They don't use their $750-per-year gym membership much, but they do walk miles on local park trails every weekend with the dog. They love their Honda Element, and intend to switch to a hybrid soon.

Attitude toward independents: In the last 12 months he has been to one independent family-owned retailer, his music store, while she goes to her salon regularly and their dog groomer every six weeks.

They use locally owned service providers such as dry cleaners more than local retailers. If they see a termite they will use Google to find an exterminator, but probably choose the brand name Terminex rather than "Smith Brothers - De-bugging this town for 60 years."

The phrase "locally owned and operated for 50 years" may actually be a disincentive to these people who are so used to the familiarity of a national brand. They may be nervous about what they perceive to be a company lacking resources or professionalism.

This couple has responded to corporate America's tempting, reassuring messages since they were children, preferring well-marketed, national burgers to those at the local greasy spoon. They are children of the brand power that permeates today's society. To them a nationally branded product or store is where to shop, preferring the comfort of the known to the possible idiosyncrasies (and perceived higher price) of the small business down the street. What they think of as a local clothing store might mean a regional chain with only 100 stores, but they look and feel national in graphics, style and policies.

Perception is reality

There is a perception on the part of Generation X and the younger Generation Y that most garden centers seem old fashioned when visually compared with modern stores in the mall or online, according to the Grapevine Survey in 2006.

Garden centers must look and feel a lot younger in order to get Gen X and Y's attention and show relevance to these customers' daily lives.

So how can we be relevant?

First, start by employing their age group a bit more (discreet tattoos, piercings and all) and their parents' age group a bit less.

You need to show change where these consumers start: online. That means you need a Web site that looks and communicates like it is talking to 25- to 35-year-old, first-time buyers, not their parents. Show them a store that has invested in young attributes such as the logo, uniforms, fixtures, lighting, colors, style and message.

Consider these strategies:

* Have a "Click here if you are under 30 or in your first home" tab.

* Format your loyalty club sign-up form to have several subcategories based on customers' ages. Then follow through with promotions using separate messages, updates or a first-timer welcome page.

* Offer podcasts of your gorgeous flower beds or patio setups.

* Write an active blog with your name all over it. You want their 24-hour blog scan to pick up key phrases like "party," "puppies," "new home," "decorate," "wellness," "organic," "fresh," "first holiday at home" and so on.

* Promote yourself using YouTube, Facebook or MySpace.

* Instead of guessing or assuming this generation's needs, why not bring them into the loop with focus groups and open-house meetings specific to that age group?

* Trust your 25-year-old Web designer to have his or her way on style and message, even if you still edit the content.

The excellent 2006 Grapevine Survey found that TV home improvement programs (28 percent) were the biggest motivator compared with independent retailers (8 percent) on a garden project. So unless we change our value perception, our relevance has already been hoed into a corner, so to speak.

Relevance checkup

For a continued relevance check, look at your ads and listen to your phone welcome message, live or recorded. Does it say "45 years of wonderful flowers and top-quality trees and shrubs" or "Fun place, easy parking, cool stuff, real people"? To this generation the garden is a project, not a past time. And landscapers are just another contractor, like a caterer or decorator. This generation's goals are short-term fun, like decoration, or long-term projects like enhancing the property.

Loyalty will be built through successful projects. Don't expect them to become friends or weekly visit groupies.

Because both spouses work and weekend time is valuable, Mr. and Mrs. I. Pod are more prepared than their parents were to use professional help to get a project completed. So while they want to see finished indoor or outdoor living vignettes on your Web site and in the store, they want help with the heavy aspects of the job.

So creating a Quick-Response Planting Crew becomes even more important now. The new consumer wants simple project instructions, quick sketches and easy-to-replicate vignettes.

Similarly, these consumers are offered personal shoppers at furniture, soft goods and department stores, but not in most garden centers. Why not a personal shopper who also does onsite diagnostic visits to the home (taking a leaf out of the Geek Squad playbook)? Taking that a stage further, the garden center that can figure out how to make money from home decorating for holidays and weddings will have all the business they need for many years to come.

Retail, landscape merge

The iPod and now the iPhone have quickly blurred lines of product functions in the electronic industry and have created a huge new business in the process.

This will be the generation that blurs the line between retailers and landscapers. They have little interest in reading, learning and figuring out the how, why and what to do. It is not a hobby to them; it is a project for which they expect help and will reward those that offer solution-based merchandising.

More retailers will be expected to listen, relate, diagnose, solve, sketch, design and at least partly install. Case closed.

So, how did you score on relevance?

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© 2007 Branch-Smith Publishing