Great Garden Plants, an online nursery based in West Michigan, founded in 2008, specialises in a wide range of plants, from succulents to hydrangeas. Under Jeremy Deppe’s leadership since 2019, the company is known for its diverse, quality plant offerings and its commitment to making gardening accessible to everyone, even if you don’t have green fingers. 

We spoke with Tori and Eleanor from Great Garden Plants, to explore how SkuVault Core has transformed their inventory management and ecommerce operations.

Life before Skuvault Core

“We didn’t have any inventory management software. Our shipping software had some inventory management built in, but that just wasn’t robust enough,” says Tori. This lack of robustness was particularly problematic when it came to managing and shipping different plant batches at various stages of readiness. 

Eleanor goes on to explain “The way we have it set up in the greenhouse, we try to keep groups together with similar requirements, like water requirements and age of the plant.” She continues, “We have different batches of plants coming, so there might be one batch that’s ready to pick and ready to ship. But then there’s, say, two other ones that are two weeks out and four weeks out in the same location.” 

This meant that sometimes, the wrong plants were being picked and shipped, which resulted in significant operational inefficiencies. The greenhouse needed a solution to differentiate between plants ready for shipping and those still growing. 

Another substantial problem Great Garden Plants faced was a lack of clear communication with their pickers and shippers. “When they’re juvenile plants, it’s hard to tell what it is, and frequently our shipping team are new every season, so it’s not like they get to know the plants – it’s really hard to know what you’re looking at,” Eleanor explains. 

Tori and her team wanted a system that not only provided a clearer labelling system between plant batches but also facilitated clearer communication with the shipping and picking teams as well.

Enhancing plant readiness tracking

SkuVault Core enabled the team at Great Garden Plants to add tracking parameters to plant batches, such as reserve and picking locations, and release dates. Tori explains, “To be able to put plants in certain on hold is nice because then it doesn’t go to the website and I like the reserve locations because then it’s very clear to the picking team that those are not good locations to pick because it’ll come up as reserved and we put a P in front of it and everything.”

“To be able to put plants in certain on hold is nice because then it doesn’t go to the website and I like the reserve locations because then it’s very clear to the picking team,”

She expands, “Having the release date that I can set out helps with customer service because too they can go in and look and see when the next batch will be available.” Not only does this help to ensure that plants that aren’t ready for picking, aren’t sold to customers, but it also improves the overall customer experience.

Reducing mis-shipments with barcode scanning

“Another thing we’re using SkuVault Core for is barcode scanning for when people are picking the plants. Our missed shipments have gone down significantly since using that scanning,” Tori comments. She continues, “Communication with the shipping team in general is a lot better because of locations and that kind of thing too. Before, the shipping team used a lot of physical flagging in groups of plants because they just couldn’t communicate well enough in terms of putting plants on hold or reserving them, but I really don’t have to do a lot of that. That’s been a huge improvement.”

“Another thing we’re using SkuVault Core for is barcode scanning for when people are picking the plants. Our missed shipments have gone down significantly since using that scanning.”

“We don’t do any returns because the plant would not survive. So anytime there’s a problem with the order, we offer to send them the correct plant and if we don’t have the correct plant, we let them substitute, and we absorb the shipping cost. We lose at least $13 every time we have to send a replacement.” says Eleanor. 

Now that each plant has a specific barcode, it helps to ensure the correct item is always picked and shipped. This has enabled Great Garden Plants to not only save on direct costs but also avoid the indirect costs associated with customer dissatisfaction and potential loss of repeat business. 

Cultivating efficiency and growth

In an industry where the freshness, quality and maturity of the product are paramount, SkuVault Core has provided Great Garden Plants with the tools to ensure that customers receive exactly what they ordered, and when they expect it, showing that with the right tools, even nightmarish, overcrowded inventory management can turn into a well-watered tranquil garden.