Ben Cohen in The Wall St. Journal shares how Home Deport invests in improving plants to improve its sales. When customers are happier gardeners, they’ll buy more.  

I view our job here at Shop Local in a similar fashion:   When we nurture a better wedding registry process for indie retailers, they’ll sell more—and we’ll sell more.  We’ll keep their business and we’ll grow our client base. 

While Home Depot employees a team of horticulturalists, we employ coders and coaches to breed the best business opportunities possible.  

I read the article and saw many parallels with our business model   

If Ben had been writing about our business, he may have said: 

“When it comes to wedding registries, those of us who don’t know the difference between engagement and bridal showers have become used to failure. 

Maybe we buy the wrong gift. Maybe we gift it at the wrong time. Maybe we pick out a gift with too much gold or give a gift from a  retailer with a rotten registry service  

For any number of reasons, people come away from their registry experience believing they just don’t have a ‘pink thumb’—and they don’t come back to wedding gifting. 

The only way to build their confidence and loyalty is to put all kinds of coders and coaches in the sales funnel to ensure they succeed. This helps  ensure we buy the right gift at the right time and checkout with ease. 

“We have one purpose, and one purpose only,” Jason Solarek, the Shop Local founder said. “We work with our national team of coders and coaches to make sure our 1,500 indie retailers offer a great registry service that gives gift givers success.” 

To grow this registry service, Shop Local monitors registries at its 1,500 indie stores across the U.S. and studies them in the field under a variety of conditions. After all, a registry that thrives in Alabama might not survive in New Jersey. For security purposes, some of those experimental registries are hidden on test sites, protected on secret server farms before the registry features are selected and patented. 

Each year, the company vets roughly 800 software enhancements before a few hundred make it to the development stage. As they monitor the trials, Shop Local and its partners focus on key attributes like hacker resistance, RAM memory tolerance, and “gift sift,” industry shorthand for registry sales funnel completion. 

What they’re really trying to do is maximize your odds of an easy gift experience. They’re looking to give the gift giver a gift." 

…….

To our Team, thank you for growing a wonderful garden of code and software features that is blooming. 🌸🌸🌸

Read the full article: 
https://www.wsj.com/business/home-depot-gardens-plants-flowers-hot-peppers-1792df6b?st=hg7cfZ&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

…….

I wrote the above improvisation of what Ben may have said based on this text in the article:

"When it comes to gardening, those of us who don’t know the difference between annuals and perennials have become used to failure. 

Maybe we buy the wrong plant. Maybe we plant it at the wrong time. Maybe we feed it too much or don’t give it enough sun. 

For any number of reasons, people come away from their experience in the garden believing they just don’t have a green thumb—and they don’t come back to Home Depot. 

The only way to build their confidence and brand loyalty is to put all kinds of gardeners in position to succeed. That means making sure we buy the right plant at the right time and nurture it the right way. 

“We have one purpose, and one purpose only,” McComish said. “We work with global breeders and regional growers to make sure we find plants so they have success in their gardens.” 

To find those plants, Home Depot runs 25 trial gardens in nine climate zones across the U.S. and studies them in the field under a variety of conditions. After all, a plant that thrives in New Mexico might not survive in New Jersey. For security purposes, some of those experimental gardens are hidden in cornfields or through backyard donkey corrals, protected on secret farms before the plants are selected and patented. 

Each year, the company vets roughly 800 genetic enhancements before 400 make it to the planting stage. As they monitor the trials, Home Depot and its partners focus on key attributes like disease resistance, drought tolerance and “flower power,” industry shorthand for color vibrancy and bloom size. 

What they’re really trying to do is maximize your odds of a lush garden. They’re looking for the seeds of success."