It’s amazing how easy it can be to impact the sales of large planters in your pottery department when you take the time and effort to also merchandise them as fountain components.
For many garden centers it can make more sense to carry a range of large pots and a limited offering of fountain supplies than it does to invest in an inventory of complete fountains. This strategy has several advantages:
- Your customers have more options and more outlets for their creativity – being able to customize a fountain to their specific tastes and size requirements is a great selling point.
- It’s easier to control your inventory – selling fountains, pumps and basins ala carte gives you flexibility in your purchasing.
- It’s generally cheaper to purchase components from your suppliers than it is a complete fountain kit – but your customers don’t necessarily know that, which allows you to build you margins in the category while remaining price competitive.
- As long as you have some pots on hand, you have a potential fountain.
Here’s a terrific article how-to article and video from “Fine Gardening” magazine which walks you through the step-by-step of building a fountain out of a planter. This technique will work with planters of any size or shape, although we recommend using a purpose-built in-ground fountain basin instead of the tub / cinder block / grate combo they use in the video.
