North American Horticultural Supply Association president Ed McConkey talks about product sales and distribution and information dissemination.

Q. More growers are implementing pay-by-scan. Has it impacted distributors?

A. A bigger impact was actually felt several years ago when bar-code labeling was required. Often many of the plant programs that growers participate in do not fill truckloads or they have fill-in orders late in the season. Distributors are able to help growers get the supplies they need for these orders at reasonable prices. The difficulty is that standard plain pots don't fit the growers' requirements. The pots need to be printed or labeled and the balance of inventories has become more difficult to manage with this added variable.

Q. Do you think pay-by-scan has had an impact on the number of products growers offer retail customers?

A. Pay-by-scan is too new to really measure the impact yet. The eventual impact will be fewer products as growers try to hold down costs and have the products at the stores that are the movers. The problem may be that the impact of pay-by-scan will not be allowed to happen as box stores begin their next initiatives like good-better-best.

Q. How are members of the North American Horticultural Supply Association working to incorporate integrated supply chain management into the horticulture industry?

A. This is what NAHSA is all about: manufacturers and distributors working together to learn and improve how products get moved to market. NAHSA is a member of the National Association of Wholesalers, which is an organization of distributors that do a lot of research on supply chain management and the forces of change that are constantly happening. Through resources like this, NAHSA trains its members on what they can do to improve the entire supply chain.

Q. Do you expect that there will continue to be consolidation in the distributor segment of the floriculture industry?

A. Again, as in other industries, there will continue to be consolidation in the ranks of distributors also. Overall, I do not think there are too many distributors.

Q. Some growers say certain floral products have become commodities. Do you feel that some of the grower-input products -- containers, growing media, polyethylene film, etc. -- have become commodities?

A. When floral products get to commodity status, costs need to be held down. If there is no significant difference in a product, cost and supply are the determining factors.

Other things like polyethylene film are mistaken for commodities and are bought on price. But there are differences that can help growers such as the IR/AC films. Their higher cost can be saved on energy bills and improved plant growth.

The same can be said about soil mixes. Many plants will grow about the same in any basic medium making some mixes commodities. But some manufacturers produce specialized mixes that are better for propagation or difficult to grow plants. Distributors can help growers by explaining the differences in mixes.

Q. Do you think NAHSA can help growers increase margins?

A. NAHSA works to educate its members and to act as an avenue for sharing information between manufacturers and distributors. Opportunities learned in one part of the nation can be shared with others to take back to their locals. From this, distributors can learn ways to go to their grower customers and help them to better understand their business and ways of cutting costs and improving margins.

Q. With cutbacks to the cooperative extension service, the role of the distributor reps has become increasingly more important to provide growers with a wide variety of information. Do you expect that this will continue?

A. There is constantly more pressure for the dollars that fund the cooperative extension programs and they will continue to be cut. Distributors are in an excellent position to help fill that void and most distributors are spending more time training their reps.

Distributor reps are also spending more time with their customers learning the growers' problems so that they can help.

The reps that bring something more than just a price on a product and are adding value to the relationship are the ones who succeed.

Q. NAHSA has provided speakers for trade shows. What has been the focus for these educational seminars?

A. The primary objective on education that NAHSA has determined it can provide to growers is understanding the business side of their operations. Too often growers don't understand their costs and how to price products or deliver them to market. They need to know about selling or controlling costs. Growing information can be gathered from other sources but NAHSA determined growers were often not getting the information they needed to run their businesses so NAHSA is trying to help fill that void. Feedback from the seminars NAHSA members have done has been very favorable and we are looking to do more.

Q. What is the purpose of the NAHSA task forces?

A. From time to time, something comes up threatening our industry. NAHSA has formed task forces to look at these issues.

Bar coding is one that was done when that first came up. Water has many issues on both the supply and runoff side. NAHSA is looking at these.

Q. What are the major issues facing most growers? How are NAHSA's task forces addressing these issues?

A. Issues: water quality and availability, water runoff and other new regulations, energy, labor shortages, costs, immigration and the changes in how plant material is marketed at retail and the forces that the big box retailers put on growers. These are big issues and NAHSA takes on those that it feels its members can help with and have the resources available to address.

NAHSA's water task force is looking at all the various issues regarding supply and runoff. NAHSA has joined with the Irrigation Association to have a better understanding and then to have NAHSA become a resource for the industry when it comes to water issues.

Through its education programs, NAHSA is looking to help growers understand their costs so they can know if they are making money or not and how to address areas where they are losing money.

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© 2006 Branch-Smith Publishing