Weston Nurseries

Started in 1923, Weston Nurseries is a fourth-generation lawn and garden business that provides the widest selection of hardy plant material available in New England. In order to meet the needs of today's customers, the business added hard good products over the years. To keep up with all the movement of inventory, Weston Nurseries chose to implement new technology from Epicor to smoothly operate the business.

“We were tracking inventory separately and doing a ton of transfers back and forth daily of hard goods and green goods products between the stores,” said Peter Mezitt, president,  Weston Nurseries. “Our previous software was not as strong with inventory or customer relationship management. The process we had in place was no longer feasible if we wanted to grow the business. We researched software options, and it came down to Epicor and  Counterpoint. We selected the Epicor Eagle® solution mainly because of reporting capabilities and the inventory functionality. This technology transition has really helped us convert the business from a production-driven business model to a buy-and-sell business model in all of our stores. Epicor has allowed us more possibilities for growth and gives us information to make  better business decisions or changes.”

Increased accuracy and improved efficiency

In order to make good decisions, businesses must first gain a clear understanding of where they stand today and what lies ahead. Weston Nurseries uses Epicor Eagle N Series software and the  Epicor Compass application to gain clear and reliable information-in real time-for decisions that improve business results.

“Eagle N Series software has helped us maintain inventory levels more accurately,” continued Mezitt. “The reporting functionality within the  Compass tool has also been a big factor in our success. Compass software automatically generates reports around promotional campaigns and how well they do. We look at customer trends through transactions and dollars spent. We drill down on customer data and inventory information for our top-level departments and classes-year-over-year, by month, and by store. It's a powerful tool that lets us run the business more efficiently.”

Enhanced loyalty program

“Another example of how we run Compass software is with our loyalty program,” added Mezitt. “If we want to know how our loyalty program is doing in terms of how many people are signed up, how often they purchase, or what they purchased, all we have to do is simply run a report, and those details are at our fingertips. We love how simple our loyalty program is now, and it has helped us gain about $100,000 in margin improvements over our prior loyalty program-where we used points that converted monthly. The program gives customer coupons on their receipts that they can use instantly-much more gratifying to peoples' fast-paced lifestyle and need for instant gratification. We've seen a nice uptick in loyalty conversions since we switched over.”

“Our new appreciation program has resulted in an increase in annual average rings per customer by about 0.3 percent. This doesn't sound like much, but it is big for our more traditional lawn and garden business that doesn't have 'consumable' items like food or gifts that people need more often,”  concluded Mezitt.