Cultivating Compelling Hybrid Experiences to Capture Loyalty and Activate Growth
Suburban Lawn & Garden blossomed from a single industrious 11-year-old with a lawnmower to a multi-faceted retail, wholesale and service organization. Today, the company includes three locations supplying trees, shrubs and bedding plants, lawn and landscape maintenance, a yard-waste recycling facility, as well as a fleet of 90 delivery vehicles. To compete with big-box home and garden improvement stores, Suburban invests in technology, including Epicor Eagle, which supports the company’s mission to grow superior products, help to provide excellent service, and deliver great value.
Matt Stueck, Vice President at Suburban Lawn & Garden, and son of the founder, outlined his approach to managing the business: “Every day I ask myself, ‘how do we avoid becoming the next obsolete business? What would make us vulnerable to being replaced?’ Complacency concerns me.”
In roughly a year, we went from selling approximately $100,000 online a year — mostly gift cards – to over $3 million in product.
To stay ahead of that curve, the Suburban team strives to anticipate customers’ evolving expectations. Stueck explained, “Today, it’s all about a hybrid experience. Customers want an enjoyable store environment and expect the ability to point and click to get whatever they want. With online retail, consumers can even bypass the retailer and go directly to the supplier. Big brands have set that bar and we need to rise to it, while maintaining the charm and local flavor of a family-owned business.” For nearly 15 years, Suburban has turned to the advanced point-of-sale (POS) and retail management capabilities of Epicor Eagle software suite to support that endeavor.
In 2017, Suburban added Epicor iNet to enable the purchase of gift cards online. Stueck knew that Epicor iNet help to offer the ability to do more; then the pandemic accelerated the move to online shopping. He acknowledged, “Suddenly customers expected everything to be available online. In roughly a year, we went from selling approximately $100,000 online a year -- mostly gift cards – to over $3 million in products.” Epicor facilitated a smooth transition to a significant eCommerce base.
Additionally, Epicor supported shifting face-to-face experiences. “In-store, we had to space out POS stations to meet social distancing guidelines,” Stueck shared. “Even with 25% fewer POS stations, we were able to funnel more customers than ever through checkout. That was primarily attributable to contactless credit card payment.”
Perhaps the most significant advantage has been the ability to handle offline transactions with the Eagle system. Stueck revealed, “In our industry, 65% of yearly sales are compressed into an eight-to-ten-week period in the spring. We lose internet or power frequently. When that happens, Epicor allows us to continue to handle transactions offline. A big box brand down the street doesn’t have offline POS, requiring them to go to cash-only during those episodes.”
He continued, “We have the peace of mind of knowing that we will never have to use hand tickets and that we are still going to deliver a very good customer experience—even if we are down all day.”
With Epicor Compass, the Suburban team gets the analytics it needs to make smart business decisions. For example, a weekly sales report helps to provide year-to-year comparisons to aid in proactive inventory and supply chain management. Data also indicates if the placement of a product impacts sales and the order point calculator gives Suburban buyers a two-week stocking outlook. Finally, a weekly low margin alert helps managers identify any product that is selling below a 25% gross margin so that any pricing issues can be remedied quickly.
Stueck elaborated, “Epicor Compass gives us data to enable real-time decision-making, to balance our inventory, save time and energy, understand what’s selling and maintain appropriate margins. It equips our employees with timely information and helps them feel even more vested in the company. Everyone can make common sense decisions because they have the data. That’s been hugely important.”
From 2018 to 2022, gross sales have increased 40%. Epicor enabled that success in part by leveling the playing field so that we can effectively compete with the big box stores while still maintaining our family-run approach. The effort that Epicor makes to stay up-to-date on innovation keeps us ahead of a lot of mass merchants on the deployment of new technologies.
Floor employees also love the Epicor Mobile Lookup application. Stueck explained, “Employees ask to download Mobile Lookup to their personal cell phones because it’s a friendly app and makes it easy to answer customer questions about stock. It empowers our employees to know that we trust them with that information.”
Another feature Stueck appreciates is debit steering in Epicor Payment Exchange for Eagle. By prompting customers to enter a PIN, roughly half of the transactions are debit rather than credit. That translated to substantial savings for Suburban, by eliminating the credit card company processing fee.
Stueck was also concerned about the management of a loyalty program. He wanted a plan that was easy for the business and customer-focused. “Epicor Eagle Loyalty allowed us to deploy a 5% cash-back program; it’s very simple and it never expires. Today, we have over 49,000 reward customers and the program has become the backbone of our marketing efforts,” he remarked.
Suburban’s long-term collaboration with Epicor has helped the company weather growth and the pandemic. Stueck disclosed, “From 2018 to 2022, gross sales have increased 40%. Epicor helped to enable that success in part by leveling the playing field so that we can effectively compete with the big box stores while still maintaining our family-run approach.” He added, “The effort that Epicor makes to stay up-to-date on innovation keeps us ahead of a lot of mass merchants on the deployment of new technologies.”
