Efficiency matters

On our nursery, Black Friday isn’t one date circled on the calendar in late November. “Black Friday” happens every year in middle-to-late spring and lasts about four weeks.

That’s when prime time selling season has our garden center customers stocking up and our wholesale nursery clients preparing for an influx of landscape contractors. It’s when Loma Vista Nursery ships six days a week — with an extreme sense of urgency that is part of every day.

Most of the intensity falls on the shipping department because shipping is the final step in a long, diligent process of getting plants to market.

Shipping pros are unsung heroes of the nursery business. They must be nimble — ready to adapt on the fly. But they also must be centered on effective standard operating procedures (SOPs) that ensure seamless efficiencies, not only during our “Black Friday” weeks but through the whole season.

Efficiency matters all the time and especially during Loma Vista Nursery’s busiest four weeks, when swiftly managing small setbacks can make the difference between consistent operations and dominoes falling. Establishing effective SOPs helps shipping manage known disruptions, like lightning or other dangerous weather delays that may impede working outdoors, and adapt quickly to unforeseen challenges.

Adapting on the fly is when a truck breaks down and is out of service for a day, or longer. It’s when a driver calls in sick, the hired truck that was scheduled to arrive at 2 p.m. doesn’t show up until 5 p.m. or a client needs a last-minute addition to their order. Back-up plans allow shipping to pivot and recover quickly so the nursery can deliver what was promised.

Consistency over chaos

Shipping is a function of the plant nursery. It includes selecting plant material and labeling and loading it to be physically transported off nursery grounds. The goal is always to deliver quality plants in a safe, timely, cost-effective and secure manner.

Distribution is optimizing the flow of plants to the end-user and is a function of our customers. For example, the end-user may be a homeowner buying plants from an independent garden center or a landscape professional taking a jobsite delivery from a wholesale distributor.

At Loma Vista Nursery, our work is centered on growing healthy plants for the customer who sells our product either through consumer retail or industry trade. SOPs ensure all the details that go into growing plants for our Midwest markets are achieved. SOPs with plans for on the fly help us create a value proposition that is centered on consistency.

Consistency is the antidote to chaos. In our experience, following SOPs helps the shipping team manage stress that inevitably accompanies our “Black Friday” weeks. These same best practices ensure strategies are seamlessly met on customer service throughout the season.

Loma Vista Nursery’s shipping manager and assistant manager are responsible for the department year-round. Our shipping manager continually forecasts the amount of human labor needed to meet demand responsibly within budget. Effectively managing our H-2A labor force allows shipping to get as big as it needs to when demand warrants, and then get very skinny quickly at other times. To ensure an agile workforce, team members are cross trained in other departments.

Customer-centric culture

At our nursery, shipping managers balance customer plant orders with other duties. These include maintaining an inventory of patent tags, which are required to accompany brands we are licensed to produce and sell.

Managers oversee planning of our delivery drivers and equipment and ensure shipping supplies are well-stocked. They continually evaluate and monitor the success of SOPs and make sure guidelines for safety and Systems Approach to Nursery Certification (SANC) requirements are followed, along with government regulations.

Having a great understanding of how everything we do at the nursery affects the customer is key to maintaining a great relationship between shipping and clients. Delivery drivers create the last impression with our customers as they unload their orders. The shipping team is responsible for managing that communication and for training our employee drivers on how best to collaborate with our clients. Hired drivers get an immersive course. However, how they collaborate is not always in our control and can be somewhat of a wildcard.

From processing and tagging to loading trucks, having the right culture on the team that ships material can make or break the success of each shipment. This means having the right people in the right places on the team and cultivating the right culture on the nursery.

Our nursery’s core value is “we grow plants we are proud of.” We also must ship plants we are proud of and instill that pride in every individual that touches the plants. Many years ago, as I was walking along our shipping dock, I came across a cigarette that had been extinguished in a plant. I was appalled. I could not imagine our customer receiving a product that someone felt could be used as an ashtray. Immediately, we improved SOPs and increased training and accountability throughout the nursery. (We also no longer allow tobacco products in the field.)

Extension of production

Safety training is a priority among all our nursery’s departments, including shipping. Ongoing training also provides customer feedback from the sales team, including sharing photos so if mistakes happen, corrections can be made. Sometimes this requires updating shipping SOPs and providing additional training. Team members also learn how to recognize plants that may not meet our standards and what to do if this happens.

With certainty, our teams know how to spot various levels of plant quality. One difficult aspect of growing and shipping plants is not getting to see where they end up. Our sales team gets the satisfaction of visiting a customer’s business and seeing our plants on display. Bringing that home through photos and shared feedback with our growers and shippers is paramount to creating a sense of purpose for those teams — and getting buy-in to shipping plants we are proud to ship.

It is near impossible to train for passion or energy. However, we can ensure that team members know the goals of the company and their respective departments, and that their individual successes are an integral part of the company’s wins. Shipping team members are invested in the financial impacts of the department’s operations and share in the company’s success through our bonus program. This is one way to motivate the team, especially during “Black Friday” weeks.

At Loma Vista Nursery, our shipping managers report to our operations manager and work closely with the sales team, quality control manager and growers. To create a positive experience internally and externally, open and clear communication is necessary between production, sales and shipping.

Production focuses on growing quality plants that meet or exceed customers’ expectations. An efficient shipping department is an extension of the production team because it ensures that plants arrive in great condition.

Extension of sales

An efficient shipping department is also an extension of the nursery’s sales team. It reinforces trust with clients by ensuring professional and reliable performance. This speaks to the integrity of the nursery and its values, which enhances customer loyalty. The shipping department’s function is primarily to deliver experiences that meet or exceed expectations.

This means accurately assembling an order and loading it in a safe and effective way that maximizes available space on the truck. It means protecting plants from damage during transit and routing the truck in the most cost-effective manner, while clearly communicating delivery schedules to clients.

How, when and in what condition plants arrive at a client site will leave an impression about the nursery’s work and its brand. Successful, on-time deliveries with no quality or accuracy issues creates value. A delivery with issues or damage in transit erodes value. The shipping department ensures that plants the production team took tremendous care, time and effort to grow — and orders the sales team worked hard to secure — arrive on time and in great shape.

At Loma Vista Nursery, we depend on our shipping department to demonstrate our brand values and make that impression. But the work begins with a committed team that practices effective SOPs and on-the-fly resiliency. With those attributes in place, the shipping department can shine as they wrap the bow on plants their growers produce.

Lyndsi Oestmann is president of Kansas-based Loma Vista Nursery, a family legacy business founded in 1991 by her father, Mark Clear. Lyndsi is a member of the AmericanHort board of directors and she and her team are active participants in the horticulture industry.