With the names of 6.8 million 12-month buyers available for rental or exchange during the third quarter of 2006, the consumer gardening category suffered a bit of erosion. According to New York-based list brokerage services firm ParadyszMatera, for the third quarter of the previous year, 6.9 million active buyers of gardening catalogers had been available. Since then, Nor East, a mailer of miniature roses, had removed its 103,000-name list from the market. Among the new-to-market files that tried to make up the shortfall were Grower’s Supply (with 24,000 12-month buyers), A.M. Leonard’s Gardener’s Edge (20,000 active buyers), and Spray-N-Grow (19,000 active buyers).
The largest file in the category belongs to Plow & Hearth, owned by multititle mailer 1-800-Flowers.com. With the tagline “Products for Country Living,” Plow & Hearth has expanded its product line in recent years to focus more on home furnishings and less on gardening products — which is no doubt why its nearly 804,000-name active-buyer file is 44% larger than that of the number-two title in the sector, Breck’s Dutch Bulbs.
Breck’s is owned by another multititle mailer, MySeasons, as are the fourth and fifth largest files in the sector: Michigan Bulb Co. and Spring Hill Nurseries. Michigan Bulb grew its active buyer file 18%, to more than 415,000 names, between the third quarter of 2005 and that of 2006, primarily by adding its Web-generated buyers to the list. Several appreciably smaller catalogers also enjoyed double-digit house file growth, among them organic-seed merchant Seeds of Change (63% growth, to 66,000 names) and bulb cataloger McClure & Zimmerman (34% growth, to 14,000 names).
During the first three quarters of 2006, 24% of the gardening catalogs received offered some sort of purchase incentive, up from 19% for all of 2005. Discounts were by far the most popular incentive: 22% of the catalogs touted them, including Breck’s, Gardens Alive, Gurney’s Seed & Nursery Co., and Spring Hill Nurseries.
In contrast only 2% of the catalogs, among them Gardener’s Edge and Johnny’s Selected Seeds, promoted free shipping. And not one cataloger offered deferred payment.
House file universe: gardening catalogs
| 3Q 2004 |
4Q 2004 |
1Q 2005 |
2Q 2005 |
3Q 2005 |
4Q 2005 |
1Q 2006 |
2Q 2006 |
3Q 2006 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total universe | 6.3 | 6.3 | 6.2 | 6.6 | 6.9 | 6.8 | 7.1 | 6.6 | 6.8 |
Gardening catalogs with the largest active buyer files
| Rank | List name | 3Q 2006 house file universe |
Average order |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Plow & Hearth | 803,903 | $90 |
| 2 | Breck’s Dutch Bulbs | 559,992 | $55 |
| 3 | Gardener’s Supply Co. | 454,300 | $83 |
| 4 | Michigan Bulb Co. | 415,131 | $20 |
| 5 | Spring Hill Nurseries | 411,607 | $60 |
| Source: ParadyszMatera | |||