June 10, 2025 • 18 mins
In this episode, iHeartMedia Chicago Region President Adam Kurtz talks with David Konsoer, Vice President of Sales at Proven Winners, a leading brand in the horticulture industry known for innovation and quality in ornamental plants.
David shares his unique career path and how his passion for plants and people has shaped his leadership style. He dives into the strategies behind building a trusted national brand, the evolving trends in gardening and landscaping, and how Proven Winners continues to thrive in a competitive market.
With decades of experience in sales and brand development, David offers practical insights into what it takes to lead with vision, build customer loyalty, and adapt to changing consumer behaviors—all while staying rooted in purpose.
Whether you're in sales, branding, horticulture, or simply love a good business story, this conversation is full of fresh ideas and real-world wisdom.
David shares his unique career path and how his passion for plants and people has shaped his leadership style. He dives into the strategies behind building a trusted national brand, the evolving trends in gardening and landscaping, and how Proven Winners continues to thrive in a competitive market.
With decades of experience in sales and brand development, David offers practical insights into what it takes to lead with vision, build customer loyalty, and adapt to changing consumer behaviors—all while staying rooted in purpose.
Whether you're in sales, branding, horticulture, or simply love a good business story, this conversation is full of fresh ideas and real-world wisdom.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to CEOs. You should know by iHeartMedia Chicago, the
podcast that brings you inspiring stories and insightful conversations with
Chicago innovators and business leaders that you should know. I
am joined by Dave concert Today, vice president of sales
for Proven Winners. Dave, before we get into anything, what's
your favorite plant?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Oh my gosh, I have to ask you that my
favorite plant is probably our most popular plant. It's a petunia.
It's called Supertunia vista bubblegum, and it's this bubblegum colored
petunia aptly named. That is a plant that literally just
about any person can have success with. And that's why
(00:40):
I love about it so much. It's our industry struggles
in the gardening industry with people thinking that they kill
plants that they've got, you know, the black thumb situation, right,
and a plant like Superortunia vista bubble gum. I can
give it to you have virtually no experience, and as
long as you keep it watered, maybe if you give
it some food a couple times a year, it's going
(01:02):
to get four times as big as what it started.
It's gonna have flowers all over and it just puts
a smile on my face and puts a smile on
so many of our customer spaces. So it's like this
just unbeatable plant, which is really what our brand is
all about.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, it's funny you mentioned super Tunia Vista. I'm going
to get to that later. There's a little bit of
a foreshadow there. Okay, so ro before we talk, I
had a time, so I might get to it sooner.
Before we get into it, tell us real quick at
your VP of sales, but tell me a little bit
what you do for the company.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, for sure. So I've been with prim Winners since
two thousand and one. I was the fourth employee and
I was hired at the time to focus on the
retail channel. So Prove Winners really started as selling young plants,
baby plants to other growers all around the country, and
that was sort of the end of the sales cycle
for the guys that founded the company. They brought me
(01:53):
in because all of a sudden, it was getting enough
for recognition that the retailers were saying, hey, we got
to have this in my store, and so the group
hired me. I had a retail background. I grew up
at my grandfather's garden center out in the Chicagoland suburbs.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And it's in the blood. It is.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It is in the blood and like the best place. Yes,
this will be a longer answer than you're gonna want.
But the best part of this story is I was
a teenager at the time and my grandfather would drive
over to Michigan and visit the growers that he would
buy plants from. And one time he came back and
I said, hey, Grandpa, Bill, how was your trip? And
he said, oh, it was incredible. He goes, I met
this really young fella who just had the cleanest greenhouse
(02:32):
I've ever seen, and he goes, I think I'm going
to start buying plants from that guy. That guy eventually
ended up hiring me to work for Proven Winners. His
name is Tom Smith, one of the owners of the
Proven Winners brand, and as Proven Winners was growing, they
needed help in the retail channel. He knew my family.
I didn't know him at all, and he called me
up and said, hey, you know we're growing, we need help.
(02:53):
I love your family, do you want to talk? We
had lunch, and now twenty three years later, I'm the
VP of sales and so I try to have an
overarching thing of how our product gets to market. From
a sales perspective. My day to day is I manage
our relationships with all the largest retailers that home depots,
the lows of the world. And I've got a great
team of people who work with me, who focus on
(03:15):
all the mom and pop independent garden centers.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Okay, you know when you talk about the big retailers,
and I've myself, I've been to those retailers and I've
seen the brand. So the brand was born in nineteen
ninety two, do I have that right? Yes, that's correct,
so relatively young when you look at the length of
established legacy brands, and yet somehow you guys have the
feel of being a legacy brand. So how do you
(03:38):
pull that off in such a short period of time.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
So it's amazing the companies that own the Proven Winners
brand Back in nineteen ninety two, they did a couple
of things that really just changed the industry and got
us to where we are today. First thing they did
is they came up with this awesome name of Proven Winners. Right,
that's just a great name that speaks to what we
(04:01):
do every single day. Yes, they were sitting around at
dinner table and came up with it, so that was awesome. Look,
I will say on that. The second thing was is
they said every single plant is going to come with
a plant tag that has care information to help the
consumer and gardener. That plant tag had the name proven
Winners on it. So without even thinking that eventually this
(04:24):
is going to become this consumer brand. By saying every
plant is going to come with a tag with our
name on it, that just sort of created the baseline
for it. And why today that seems well, of course
that would have that Back in nineteen ninety two, most
plants were sold with no tags at all, or with
a small little tag that really didn't have a lot
of information, so that was sort of revolutionary at the time.
(04:46):
The third thing that they did is they've they came
up with this idea and we've stuck to it. It's
our north star to this day of we are going
to be consumer focused on plant performance. So instead of
most of the other breeding companies within our industry, they're
focused on selling plants to growers. They care if the
grower has a lot of success, that's the end of
it for us. Every time that we select a plant.
(05:09):
We're starting at the consumer and working our way backwards.
We want to make sure that consumer when they buy
a pre Winner's plant, they are going to have more
success than they would with anything else on the marketplace.
So it's it's making the product work for the consumer,
and that's branding one on one, no matter what industry
you're in too. Packaging, which was sort of that initial tag,
was our original package. Now we have branded containers that
(05:32):
are easily identifiable in the retail marketplace. So having a
good you know, like an apple, you know what an
apple product looks like based on packaging, That's what we
did within the plant world.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
That's great, that's fun. I was going to ask, you know,
what do you want people to think when they when
someone buys a proven Winners plant, Right, that should mean something,
But you sort of just answered what that means.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Present has been trial and tested that they are going
to have the most success possible.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Which brings me my next question. The trialing process, Yeah,
which I've known nothing about, but I did start to
dig into it a little bit and what I didn't
realize is that it takes years and years. So my
question to you guys is if it takes five to seven,
maybe ten years to try out, how do you know
then what consumers are gonna want a decade later. How
(06:17):
does that work?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
That is hard. And we've been blessed with all of
our different categories. So we're in shrubs, perennials, annuals, houseplants, kalladiums,
all these different areas of gardening. We've been blessed to
have true plantsmen, for lack of a better word, people
who just really understand plants, and those breeders. Sometimes it's
(06:42):
luck for sure, other times it's our product development team
will work with these breeders and say, hey, we see
this potential trend, whether it's colors, whether it's you know,
with climate change that's going on, we need plants that
are more drought tolerant, that need less care, that will
hold up to rain really well and bounce back. We
see monitor trends like small space gardening where there's more
(07:06):
people in townhouses and condos or balconies or here in
the city there's lots of balcony gardening. So we'll work
with our breeders to say, hey, we want to shrink
that plant down still maintain great performance, but let's make
it a little bit smaller where it's just going to
be easier for people to maintain and care for.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, well, in city like Chicago, too limited space. Also,
I'm not a meteorologist, but it does seem to rain
not quite as much as it used to. So I'm
wondering if you're if you guys are thinking a lot
of about the way the climate's impacted and maybe maybe help.
You know, plants that do well in.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Heat one hundred percent don't require as much water percent
heat and drop tolerance is thing, you know, especially here
in the United States, which is our core market, with
the country being so big and you have so many
different climactic conditions, right, so we need stuff from San Diego,
you know, all the way up to Maine down to Florida,
and so it we work really hard to say, you know,
(08:01):
for the most part, we try to say any pre
winter's plants going to work anywhere in the United States,
there's you know, the desert, it's obviously harder, and we'll
develop plants that right now. For the past i don't know, five, six, seven, eight,
ten years now, we've been working really, really really hard
to develop plants for the southern market where that high heat,
high humidity, sometimes tons of rain, sometimes no rain. We're
(08:24):
just trying to make plants that are really resilient for
as many people as possible.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Okay, can we talk about the names sure of the
plants real quick? Because you mentioned super Tunia Vista series.
It's a series of plants apparently, right. I never heard
of that before, but I did see. One of the
names was cool Jazz, and if there's a plant called
cool Jazz, I want it. And I saw a few
like that. Where do you guys come up with these names?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Who does this?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Fantastic? So we had a long time employee who worked
with us for a long time who she was like
our namings are. She's not with us any longer. But
Carrie was just incredibly creative and where I give her
a ton of credit. For the most part, in our industry,
plants would just be called you know whatever, yellow, XYZ, red, white.
(09:14):
Carrie had this ability to say, let's create a catchy
name that the consumer is going to remember. So cool
Jazz is this lavender colored petunia that we could have
just called it light lavender, but all of a sudden,
you give it a name. Exactly, a name like cool
Jazz that is going to catch the consumer's eye and attention,
(09:36):
and then really it's all about remembering it from one
year to the next, because for a lot of times
in our industry, a lot of our competitors again because
they're just focused on the grower, they just don't care
about a lot of that stuff and they just want
plants to get into the marketplace. We want that person
when they have success with Supertunitavius the cool Jazz, that
they're gonna remember, Hey, I want to have that again
next year. Yeah, and that gets the repeat purchasing again,
(09:58):
which is all what branding is all about.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
When you think about these names and the different looks
of all the all the plants and the flowers, does
it ever occur to you and your team how personal
if it's a decision it is when you're buying plants,
and how it's a reflection of people, and not to
get you know, too deep into it, but when you're
buying plants, I mean everyone buys differently, Yeah, everyone sees
(10:20):
everything differently. Yeah, it can be a pretty personal decision.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
One hundred percent. And I think that's why I love,
love love My job is that we're selling a product
that puts a smile on someone's face that when they
buy our you know, starter plant that's in a four
and a half inch sized pot, for example, plant it
may here in the Chicagoland area. Come October, the thing
has gotten four times as big. It's got your neighbors
(10:45):
coming over saying, oh my gosh, you're such a good gardener. Right,
and it just creates this amazing connection to nature that
most other products that you buy don't have. And so
I talk about that all the time. You know, we've
got inflationary concerns in our in our world right now.
What I love about what we sell and give to
consumers is they're buying a plant that may cost five
(11:08):
or six dollars that'll last for six months, that's going
to increase in size and add value to your home.
There's not many hobbies that you have that you can
start with a pretty inexpensive plant that actually improves over time.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
From a discretionary category standpoint, there is no better deal.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
It's a great point, correct, correct.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Right, Like if you go to you know, to the
hardware store to buy a new mailbox, you're going to
spend whatever, one hundred dollars on this mailbox that is functional,
but that's it. You don't really get any major value
or passion from it.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Do you not love your mailbox? So you know you'd
mentioned everyone has different different level of experience with planting
green thumb, black thumb, everything in between. Can you talk
a little bit about the website because it seems to
me that it is quite a resource for sure, or
a number a number of gardening aspects.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And that's another thing that we've taken very very seriously
at proven winners with that I mentioned earlier being focused
on the consumer. So we want to give them a
great plant. We also want to give them the knowledge
to be successful, and that's something we do very very
differently than anybody else in the industry. And so we
know that when they're in the garden center they're making
this choice to buy this plant, they're probably nervous about it.
(12:23):
Most people are. They have sort of overwhelmed, What am
I going to do? How's this going to work? Is
it going to die? We want to give them so
many resources when they get home that they are they
they've almost got like an expert gardener at their fingertips.
So we have a very very well thought out website
on so many different levels, from video to articles to
(12:45):
you know, basic web searches. It's an amazing resource for
consumers that frankly, sometimes I think we take for granted
that we do that, it's just baked into who we are.
But when you look at our competitors, it's like, shoot,
they haven't updated their website in years.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
It's a miss. I mean, there's so much help right
there at your fingertips, so people should absolutely use that.
So you mentioned the big stores, right, but you are
you're doing business with independence as well, on a per
se which I would think ties you to a lot
of local communities across the country. What can you talk
about that a little.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Bit for sure. About seventy five percent of our total
business is with local, mom and pop independent garden centers.
A lot of people are surprised by that because our
plants are sold at the big box retailers, and the
retailers have seen the value in our brand, so they
treat it in their good, better, best categories. Proven winners
is in their best categories. So we do have a
(13:37):
lot of great placement there. But the lifeblood of who
we are are these local independent garden centers like my
grandfather no longer with us, but that store is exactly
who we want to be able to reach and they
do a wonderful job with having a deep mix of
our products, so they have a lot of our different
varieties in all of our different categories and they provide
(13:59):
tremendous nervis to the consumer. For the last twenty three years,
we've had really our industries only training program specifically for
independent garden centers, and so I film a video every
single year. We help train the local staff to be
super knowledgeable about proven winn so that when that consumer
comes in, not only are they going to get a
(14:19):
great plant, but they're gonna be able to ask that employee, Hey,
what do I do here? What should I buy? YadA YadA,
and that the training that we give them helps in
that decision making process.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
That's great in sticking with community. There's a something that
started called club sprout correct. Yes, can you talk about
that a little bit too? Yeah, So, because I love
the idea, especially these days of kids getting their hands dirty,
getting in there with the earth, getting outside, getting off
the device.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So you know, our industry really grew to the success
because of the baby boomer generation, right, and that's been
a big focus of ours from marketing and everything that
we do. Obviously, that audience is getting older, and so
our goal has been to try to get younger people
engaged in gardening. Right. And I look at my kids.
(15:09):
I've got young kids, and you know, as I think,
as that agricultural based community starts to get older, and
my kids don't have as much access to it as
maybe I did with my grandparents and everything. And so
the club sprout was really ideas for kids. And so
we we've got like kids and tools and everything that
garden centers can have little seminars or kids' days or whatever,
(15:33):
and just a way to get kids to think about
this connection with nature, I think is really really vital
to our company, but I think just to the country
in general.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
I love that you guys are doing that.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Ye, thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So before we wrap up, what's what's next for Proven Winners?
Where are you guys going from here? Well, I'll start
building cars.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
No, we're not not going to do cars. Not going
to do cars. So you know, it's funny we while
we've talked a lot about plants today in all of
our different plant categories. We also firmly believe that it's
the other products that help make consumers successful all along
the way. So things like we know, you know, a
lot of families have two working parents. Now we're working hard,
(16:17):
it's hard to water at the end of the day.
You get home from a long work day, You've got
to make dinner for the kids, or take your kid
to basketball practice, and then it's like, oh, I've got
to water my plants, right, And even we may be
the best intention to care for these plants, life does
get in the way. So we've tried to do a
lot of things and we continue to look for opportunities
like this to say, how can we make that process easier.
(16:38):
So we've got self watering containers that will hold you know,
two weeks worth of water, so that instead of having
you do it every day boom, you can just do
it every other saturday. Fill up that water reservoir and
you don't have to worry about water. And we've got
drip irrigation kits to do the same thing. We've got
incredible potting soil that is designed to make our plants
work better. Same with a line of fertilizer. We've got
(17:00):
these augurs to drill a hole in the ground. It
fits the size of our pot perfectly. You just pop
the plan out, drop it in the hole, and you're done.
So we're trying to say, how can we make the
whole gardening experience easier for frankly, what is a time
short consumer and in many cases a knowledge short consumer,
(17:21):
people who are intimidated by gardening to say, if you
just look at the proven Winners brand, we're going to
give you all the tools so you can be successful
from start to finish. So we're going to continue to
look for opportunities like that, great product lines. You know,
one category we're not in right now as vegetables, and
so that's a big opportunity for us that we're looking
for partners on that front to say, you know, can
(17:43):
we get growers growers yeah, and breeders who can bring
us the genetics to put into that product line. There's
a lot of vegetables out there. We want to find
that vegetable that's better than what is out there that's
going to you know, give you more fruit, harvest earlier,
less care less disease, that type of thing. So any
rate lots and lots of opportunities for us to continue
(18:03):
to make gardener successful.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Want to plug a website, sure, Proven Winners dot com.
Nice and easy, and again there's a gazillion resources there,
from pictures to recipe gardens, to basic care to if
you want to track butterflies to your yard. We've got
all that kind of things to say. These are the
plants that you need if you want to bring hummingbirds in,
if you want deer resistant plants. Not as big of
an issue here in downtown Chicago, but for a lot
(18:28):
of our customers, deer pressure is a real issue. And
so we've got a whole line of shrubs that are
called deer proof and these are shrubs that have been
tested at universities to say deer will typically stay away
from these shrubs. So lots and lots and lots of
resources like that at proven Winners dot Com.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I love it. Proven Winners pretty incredible company. Dave Cancer,
thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I appreciate it.
Welcome to CEOs. You should know by iHeartMedia Chicago, the
podcast that brings you inspiring stories and insightful conversations with
Chicago innovators and business leaders that you should know. I
am joined by Dave concert Today, vice president of sales
for Proven Winners. Dave, before we get into anything, what's
your favorite plant?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Oh my gosh, I have to ask you that my
favorite plant is probably our most popular plant. It's a petunia.
It's called Supertunia vista bubblegum, and it's this bubblegum colored
petunia aptly named. That is a plant that literally just
about any person can have success with. And that's why
(00:40):
I love about it so much. It's our industry struggles
in the gardening industry with people thinking that they kill
plants that they've got, you know, the black thumb situation, right,
and a plant like Superortunia vista bubble gum. I can
give it to you have virtually no experience, and as
long as you keep it watered, maybe if you give
it some food a couple times a year, it's going
(01:02):
to get four times as big as what it started.
It's gonna have flowers all over and it just puts
a smile on my face and puts a smile on
so many of our customer spaces. So it's like this
just unbeatable plant, which is really what our brand is
all about.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, it's funny you mentioned super Tunia Vista. I'm going
to get to that later. There's a little bit of
a foreshadow there. Okay, so ro before we talk, I
had a time, so I might get to it sooner.
Before we get into it, tell us real quick at
your VP of sales, but tell me a little bit
what you do for the company.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, for sure. So I've been with prim Winners since
two thousand and one. I was the fourth employee and
I was hired at the time to focus on the
retail channel. So Prove Winners really started as selling young plants,
baby plants to other growers all around the country, and
that was sort of the end of the sales cycle
for the guys that founded the company. They brought me
(01:53):
in because all of a sudden, it was getting enough
for recognition that the retailers were saying, hey, we got
to have this in my store, and so the group
hired me. I had a retail background. I grew up
at my grandfather's garden center out in the Chicagoland suburbs.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And it's in the blood. It is.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It is in the blood and like the best place. Yes,
this will be a longer answer than you're gonna want.
But the best part of this story is I was
a teenager at the time and my grandfather would drive
over to Michigan and visit the growers that he would
buy plants from. And one time he came back and
I said, hey, Grandpa, Bill, how was your trip? And
he said, oh, it was incredible. He goes, I met
this really young fella who just had the cleanest greenhouse
(02:32):
I've ever seen, and he goes, I think I'm going
to start buying plants from that guy. That guy eventually
ended up hiring me to work for Proven Winners. His
name is Tom Smith, one of the owners of the
Proven Winners brand, and as Proven Winners was growing, they
needed help in the retail channel. He knew my family.
I didn't know him at all, and he called me
up and said, hey, you know we're growing, we need help.
(02:53):
I love your family, do you want to talk? We
had lunch, and now twenty three years later, I'm the
VP of sales and so I try to have an
overarching thing of how our product gets to market. From
a sales perspective. My day to day is I manage
our relationships with all the largest retailers that home depots,
the lows of the world. And I've got a great
team of people who work with me, who focus on
(03:15):
all the mom and pop independent garden centers.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Okay, you know when you talk about the big retailers,
and I've myself, I've been to those retailers and I've
seen the brand. So the brand was born in nineteen
ninety two, do I have that right? Yes, that's correct,
so relatively young when you look at the length of
established legacy brands, and yet somehow you guys have the
feel of being a legacy brand. So how do you
(03:38):
pull that off in such a short period of time.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
So it's amazing the companies that own the Proven Winners
brand Back in nineteen ninety two, they did a couple
of things that really just changed the industry and got
us to where we are today. First thing they did
is they came up with this awesome name of Proven Winners. Right,
that's just a great name that speaks to what we
(04:01):
do every single day. Yes, they were sitting around at
dinner table and came up with it, so that was awesome. Look,
I will say on that. The second thing was is
they said every single plant is going to come with
a plant tag that has care information to help the
consumer and gardener. That plant tag had the name proven
Winners on it. So without even thinking that eventually this
(04:24):
is going to become this consumer brand. By saying every
plant is going to come with a tag with our
name on it, that just sort of created the baseline
for it. And why today that seems well, of course
that would have that Back in nineteen ninety two, most
plants were sold with no tags at all, or with
a small little tag that really didn't have a lot
of information, so that was sort of revolutionary at the time.
(04:46):
The third thing that they did is they've they came
up with this idea and we've stuck to it. It's
our north star to this day of we are going
to be consumer focused on plant performance. So instead of
most of the other breeding companies within our industry, they're
focused on selling plants to growers. They care if the
grower has a lot of success, that's the end of
it for us. Every time that we select a plant.
(05:09):
We're starting at the consumer and working our way backwards.
We want to make sure that consumer when they buy
a pre Winner's plant, they are going to have more
success than they would with anything else on the marketplace.
So it's it's making the product work for the consumer,
and that's branding one on one, no matter what industry
you're in too. Packaging, which was sort of that initial tag,
was our original package. Now we have branded containers that
(05:32):
are easily identifiable in the retail marketplace. So having a
good you know, like an apple, you know what an
apple product looks like based on packaging, That's what we
did within the plant world.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
That's great, that's fun. I was going to ask, you know,
what do you want people to think when they when
someone buys a proven Winners plant, Right, that should mean something,
But you sort of just answered what that means.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Present has been trial and tested that they are going
to have the most success possible.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Which brings me my next question. The trialing process, Yeah,
which I've known nothing about, but I did start to
dig into it a little bit and what I didn't
realize is that it takes years and years. So my
question to you guys is if it takes five to seven,
maybe ten years to try out, how do you know
then what consumers are gonna want a decade later. How
(06:17):
does that work?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
That is hard. And we've been blessed with all of
our different categories. So we're in shrubs, perennials, annuals, houseplants, kalladiums,
all these different areas of gardening. We've been blessed to
have true plantsmen, for lack of a better word, people
who just really understand plants, and those breeders. Sometimes it's
(06:42):
luck for sure, other times it's our product development team
will work with these breeders and say, hey, we see
this potential trend, whether it's colors, whether it's you know,
with climate change that's going on, we need plants that
are more drought tolerant, that need less care, that will
hold up to rain really well and bounce back. We
see monitor trends like small space gardening where there's more
(07:06):
people in townhouses and condos or balconies or here in
the city there's lots of balcony gardening. So we'll work
with our breeders to say, hey, we want to shrink
that plant down still maintain great performance, but let's make
it a little bit smaller where it's just going to
be easier for people to maintain and care for.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, well, in city like Chicago, too limited space. Also,
I'm not a meteorologist, but it does seem to rain
not quite as much as it used to. So I'm
wondering if you're if you guys are thinking a lot
of about the way the climate's impacted and maybe maybe help.
You know, plants that do well in.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Heat one hundred percent don't require as much water percent
heat and drop tolerance is thing, you know, especially here
in the United States, which is our core market, with
the country being so big and you have so many
different climactic conditions, right, so we need stuff from San Diego,
you know, all the way up to Maine down to Florida,
and so it we work really hard to say, you know,
(08:01):
for the most part, we try to say any pre
winter's plants going to work anywhere in the United States,
there's you know, the desert, it's obviously harder, and we'll
develop plants that right now. For the past i don't know, five, six, seven, eight,
ten years now, we've been working really, really really hard
to develop plants for the southern market where that high heat,
high humidity, sometimes tons of rain, sometimes no rain. We're
(08:24):
just trying to make plants that are really resilient for
as many people as possible.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Okay, can we talk about the names sure of the
plants real quick? Because you mentioned super Tunia Vista series.
It's a series of plants apparently, right. I never heard
of that before, but I did see. One of the
names was cool Jazz, and if there's a plant called
cool Jazz, I want it. And I saw a few
like that. Where do you guys come up with these names?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Who does this?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Fantastic? So we had a long time employee who worked
with us for a long time who she was like
our namings are. She's not with us any longer. But
Carrie was just incredibly creative and where I give her
a ton of credit. For the most part, in our industry,
plants would just be called you know whatever, yellow, XYZ, red, white.
(09:14):
Carrie had this ability to say, let's create a catchy
name that the consumer is going to remember. So cool
Jazz is this lavender colored petunia that we could have
just called it light lavender, but all of a sudden,
you give it a name. Exactly, a name like cool
Jazz that is going to catch the consumer's eye and attention,
(09:36):
and then really it's all about remembering it from one
year to the next, because for a lot of times
in our industry, a lot of our competitors again because
they're just focused on the grower, they just don't care
about a lot of that stuff and they just want
plants to get into the marketplace. We want that person
when they have success with Supertunitavius the cool Jazz, that
they're gonna remember, Hey, I want to have that again
next year. Yeah, and that gets the repeat purchasing again,
(09:58):
which is all what branding is all about.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
When you think about these names and the different looks
of all the all the plants and the flowers, does
it ever occur to you and your team how personal
if it's a decision it is when you're buying plants,
and how it's a reflection of people, and not to
get you know, too deep into it, but when you're
buying plants, I mean everyone buys differently, Yeah, everyone sees
(10:20):
everything differently. Yeah, it can be a pretty personal decision.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
One hundred percent. And I think that's why I love,
love love My job is that we're selling a product
that puts a smile on someone's face that when they
buy our you know, starter plant that's in a four
and a half inch sized pot, for example, plant it
may here in the Chicagoland area. Come October, the thing
has gotten four times as big. It's got your neighbors
(10:45):
coming over saying, oh my gosh, you're such a good gardener. Right,
and it just creates this amazing connection to nature that
most other products that you buy don't have. And so
I talk about that all the time. You know, we've
got inflationary concerns in our in our world right now.
What I love about what we sell and give to
consumers is they're buying a plant that may cost five
(11:08):
or six dollars that'll last for six months, that's going
to increase in size and add value to your home.
There's not many hobbies that you have that you can
start with a pretty inexpensive plant that actually improves over time.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
From a discretionary category standpoint, there is no better deal.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
It's a great point, correct, correct.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Right, Like if you go to you know, to the
hardware store to buy a new mailbox, you're going to
spend whatever, one hundred dollars on this mailbox that is functional,
but that's it. You don't really get any major value
or passion from it.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Do you not love your mailbox? So you know you'd
mentioned everyone has different different level of experience with planting
green thumb, black thumb, everything in between. Can you talk
a little bit about the website because it seems to
me that it is quite a resource for sure, or
a number a number of gardening aspects.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And that's another thing that we've taken very very seriously
at proven winners with that I mentioned earlier being focused
on the consumer. So we want to give them a
great plant. We also want to give them the knowledge
to be successful, and that's something we do very very
differently than anybody else in the industry. And so we
know that when they're in the garden center they're making
this choice to buy this plant, they're probably nervous about it.
(12:23):
Most people are. They have sort of overwhelmed, What am
I going to do? How's this going to work? Is
it going to die? We want to give them so
many resources when they get home that they are they
they've almost got like an expert gardener at their fingertips.
So we have a very very well thought out website
on so many different levels, from video to articles to
(12:45):
you know, basic web searches. It's an amazing resource for
consumers that frankly, sometimes I think we take for granted
that we do that, it's just baked into who we are.
But when you look at our competitors, it's like, shoot,
they haven't updated their website in years.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
It's a miss. I mean, there's so much help right
there at your fingertips, so people should absolutely use that.
So you mentioned the big stores, right, but you are
you're doing business with independence as well, on a per
se which I would think ties you to a lot
of local communities across the country. What can you talk
about that a little.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Bit for sure. About seventy five percent of our total
business is with local, mom and pop independent garden centers.
A lot of people are surprised by that because our
plants are sold at the big box retailers, and the
retailers have seen the value in our brand, so they
treat it in their good, better, best categories. Proven winners
is in their best categories. So we do have a
(13:37):
lot of great placement there. But the lifeblood of who
we are are these local independent garden centers like my
grandfather no longer with us, but that store is exactly
who we want to be able to reach and they
do a wonderful job with having a deep mix of
our products, so they have a lot of our different
varieties in all of our different categories and they provide
(13:59):
tremendous nervis to the consumer. For the last twenty three years,
we've had really our industries only training program specifically for
independent garden centers, and so I film a video every
single year. We help train the local staff to be
super knowledgeable about proven winn so that when that consumer
comes in, not only are they going to get a
(14:19):
great plant, but they're gonna be able to ask that employee, Hey,
what do I do here? What should I buy? YadA YadA,
and that the training that we give them helps in
that decision making process.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
That's great in sticking with community. There's a something that
started called club sprout correct. Yes, can you talk about
that a little bit too? Yeah, So, because I love
the idea, especially these days of kids getting their hands dirty,
getting in there with the earth, getting outside, getting off
the device.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So you know, our industry really grew to the success
because of the baby boomer generation, right, and that's been
a big focus of ours from marketing and everything that
we do. Obviously, that audience is getting older, and so
our goal has been to try to get younger people
engaged in gardening. Right. And I look at my kids.
(15:09):
I've got young kids, and you know, as I think,
as that agricultural based community starts to get older, and
my kids don't have as much access to it as
maybe I did with my grandparents and everything. And so
the club sprout was really ideas for kids. And so
we we've got like kids and tools and everything that
garden centers can have little seminars or kids' days or whatever,
(15:33):
and just a way to get kids to think about
this connection with nature, I think is really really vital
to our company, but I think just to the country
in general.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
I love that you guys are doing that.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Ye, thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So before we wrap up, what's what's next for Proven Winners?
Where are you guys going from here? Well, I'll start
building cars.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
No, we're not not going to do cars. Not going
to do cars. So you know, it's funny we while
we've talked a lot about plants today in all of
our different plant categories. We also firmly believe that it's
the other products that help make consumers successful all along
the way. So things like we know, you know, a
lot of families have two working parents. Now we're working hard,
(16:17):
it's hard to water at the end of the day.
You get home from a long work day, You've got
to make dinner for the kids, or take your kid
to basketball practice, and then it's like, oh, I've got
to water my plants, right, And even we may be
the best intention to care for these plants, life does
get in the way. So we've tried to do a
lot of things and we continue to look for opportunities
like this to say, how can we make that process easier.
(16:38):
So we've got self watering containers that will hold you know,
two weeks worth of water, so that instead of having
you do it every day boom, you can just do
it every other saturday. Fill up that water reservoir and
you don't have to worry about water. And we've got
drip irrigation kits to do the same thing. We've got
incredible potting soil that is designed to make our plants
work better. Same with a line of fertilizer. We've got
(17:00):
these augurs to drill a hole in the ground. It
fits the size of our pot perfectly. You just pop
the plan out, drop it in the hole, and you're done.
So we're trying to say, how can we make the
whole gardening experience easier for frankly, what is a time
short consumer and in many cases a knowledge short consumer,
(17:21):
people who are intimidated by gardening to say, if you
just look at the proven Winners brand, we're going to
give you all the tools so you can be successful
from start to finish. So we're going to continue to
look for opportunities like that, great product lines. You know,
one category we're not in right now as vegetables, and
so that's a big opportunity for us that we're looking
for partners on that front to say, you know, can
(17:43):
we get growers growers yeah, and breeders who can bring
us the genetics to put into that product line. There's
a lot of vegetables out there. We want to find
that vegetable that's better than what is out there that's
going to you know, give you more fruit, harvest earlier,
less care less disease, that type of thing. So any
rate lots and lots of opportunities for us to continue
(18:03):
to make gardener successful.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Want to plug a website, sure, Proven Winners dot com.
Nice and easy, and again there's a gazillion resources there,
from pictures to recipe gardens, to basic care to if
you want to track butterflies to your yard. We've got
all that kind of things to say. These are the
plants that you need if you want to bring hummingbirds in,
if you want deer resistant plants. Not as big of
an issue here in downtown Chicago, but for a lot
(18:28):
of our customers, deer pressure is a real issue. And
so we've got a whole line of shrubs that are
called deer proof and these are shrubs that have been
tested at universities to say deer will typically stay away
from these shrubs. So lots and lots and lots of
resources like that at proven Winners dot Com.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I love it. Proven Winners pretty incredible company. Dave Cancer,
thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I appreciate it.
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