Well the nursery has been open a week. We have figured out how to use the till -which we have used once or twice – and how to unlock the gates. Perhaps it’s best to say that the first week can be summed up as a critical success but a commercial ‘challenge’! Still, the season is young, I have no road signs, no adverts and only just have a website so I’m sure I’ll see more visitors as the year progresses.
My parents were up this weekend for a birthday celebration – mostly spent weeding and fixing the ride-on mower. After much firtling about Dad and Dave finally got it running.
How to make a grown man grin….
And the weather was just beautiful – a perfect spring day. I think this photo just about sums it up:
3 Responses to “The first week.”
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Hi Trillium – some advice based on what I’ve been learning over the past few years about running a business(and sorry if you’ve already thought of it all) : you need publicity. Advertise as much as you can afford, but don’t neglect “free” marketing possibilities – networking, getting clients to leave you an e-mail address so you can send out a regular newsletter, running special events and letting the local paper know, noticing companies in the area who have tatty entrances and contacting them to offer design / supply/ maintenance services (if you can’t handle all this yourself, find another firm who does the bits you don’t and work together). In addition, get yourself a website and think carefully about the keywords you submit to the search engines;think about developing a web-based mail order system so that you’re not dependent on local clients; include a blog as part of the website and write about one of your products or services in each post – the search engines love blogs and will pick it up.
And most of all, don’t be shy about including in all your publicity the fact that the nursery is run by the person who won the BBC Gardener of the Year award. It will not only bring in the curious – necessary in the first couple of years – but will also create confidence, which every new business needs desperately.
PS – When I posted this the first time it didn’t make sense – which is why I deleted it and tried again. It’s been a long day …
Thanks Sue, much appreciated.
The website is finally up (see links above). I have put out a press release ‘BBC Gardener of the Year takes on Cheshire RHS Partner nursery’, to local, regional and horticultural press – but so far there has been a near deafening silence. So I’ll do my own thing. I’ve been invited to two local garden group meetings so far and have all my NGS marketing material ready to go out.
What I really need is for my AA road signs to go up. Since I’m down a quiet no-through-road lane I’ve no main road signage at all. That shoud help a lot.