Being the manager at one of America's busiest garden centers, I cannot say I have much sympathy for Hines. They chose their poison. About ten years ago Hines and Monrovia Nursery were neck and neck, certainly the two leading growers of wholesale nursery stock in the country. At that time Hines chose to take the discount road, while Monrovia took the premium road. Now the announcement on August 20 that Hines is bankrupt. Their Chapter 11 document lists assests at less than $50,000 and a staggering amount of debt - as high as $500 million. Hines business and revenue stream has been dominated by three or four large national accounts, namely Home Depot and Lowes. On the other hand, Monrovia's business is hugely diiversified, selling almost exclusively to thousands of individual independent garden centers. No single account has much impact at the end of the day on Monrovia's fiscal success. What may also be interesting to note is that over the past two or three years the gardening market share has shrunk at big box retaliers like Depot and Lowes while at the same time it has grown at local independant garden centers. This is a surprising trend in the gardening market. It follows over twently years of expanding market share for big boxes and a simultaneous decline in market share for independent nurseries. The plant business is now returning to local independant garden centers. Ron Vanderhoff General Manager Roger's Gardens California ----- Original Message ---- From: brown.mark <brown.mark@wanadoo.fr> To: Pacific Bulb Society <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2008 1:05:33 AM Subject: Re: [pbs] HInes Bankruptcy I don't call this gardening ,I call this greed !! God help us when plants and gardeners become the play things of Wall Street. ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Waddick" <jwaddick@kc.rr.com> To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2008 10:05 PM Subject: [pbs] HInes Bankruptcy > > Dear All, > This may be off topic to a certain degree, but I just learned > that Hines Hort., the 2nd largest commercial nursery in the US filed > for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 a few weeks ago. There is > an interesting commercial nursery blog discussion at > http://thegoldengecko.com/blog/?p=230 tracing Hines' problem to the > practices of big box stores. > > The big box stores get plants from growers at no cost. They > pay only for those that sell. If they die under the box store care or > just get discarded at the end of the season, the box store has no > investment and the grower takes all the risks. > > Some of this may of interest to some of you. I found it > intriguing especially in context of the US economy. > > Best Jim W. > -- > Dr. James W. Waddick > 8871 NW Brostrom Rd. > Kansas City Missouri 64152-2711 > USA > Ph. 816-746-1949 > Zone 5 Record low -23F > Summer 100F + > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ > > _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/