Blossoming offshoot spreads its tendrils into the US By Jonathan Moules
It is early days for Garden Boutique, which launched last November. But Bowe believes that she is tapping into a lucrative market for mail order gardening products and that this venture could substantially expand her company’s size.
She quotes the Horticultural Trade Associations Garden Industry Monitor, which found that mail order sales of flowers and plants grew 31 percent last year to £194.7m while sales from garden centres fell 3 percent year –on-year.
Bowe’s decision to try to move her business up a gear with an online selling model that can grow quickly with relatively little extra headcount, has forced her to ask a question that all start-ups must consider at some point.
Was she happier with her business when it was ore of a lifestyle activity, satisfying her desire to tend peoples’ borders while providing employment for a couple f staff, or does she now prefer the cut and thrust of building a considerable enterprise?
Money is certainly not the prime motivator, Bowe insists.
“ started my business not because I had any burning passion to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to design gardens” she says
However, she admits that the revenue generated by her business is enabling her to try new commercial ideas. Which she enjoys creating.
Bowe adds that she can now see her business becoming something much bigger “I think I am beginning to learn how to be an entrepreneur.”
Bowe, who has never needed outside backers for her business and financed the development of her online shop entirely from the profits, stresses that Garden Boutique complements her original landscape design operation because it is selling items she would be sourcing anyway.
“The strength is that it is all part of the same business,” she says
Her skill in garden design also enables Garden Boutique to differentiate itself from more run-of-the-mill garden shop websites, Bowe adds.
For instance, each of the window boxes the site sells designed by Bowe, drawing on her own experience.
“Often you buy a window box and you don’t know what to do with it.” She says “This is something I can do well.”
The next 12 months are likely to be critical for the business. But unlike most gardeners, who are content to wait months for the fruits of their labour, Bowe seems keen to see some rapid growth.
