Our store of the future must be a destination: full of inspiration, innovation, and sustainability

Plantagen – which sells plants and garden accessories in Norway, Sweden, and Finland – was taken over by a private equity group in 2016. Nina Jönsson took over as CEO in May 2020, following senior positions in other retail and consumer goods organizations. She talked to Jens Torchalla, a Partner in Oliver Wyman’s Retail & Consumer Goods Practice, and Sirko Siemssen, Global Leader of the Practice, about the plant store of the future, digitization, and working alongside private capital investors.

Gardening and DIY have been huge trends in the last two years. At the same time, your business has surely run into pandemic-related challenges. Can you describe your experience? How has customer behavior developed, and what is here to stay?

We have had a huge boost from the COVID pandemic. People were already interested in spending more time with nature, and in general people feel better when they are around plants. Then, when the pandemic hit, people shifted substantial parts of their spending towards redecorating their homes and buying products that we sell. Also, we were just about to launch a click-and-collect service anyway, so we accelerated that initiative immediately. And suddenly, lots of consumers who hadn’t ever purchased plants online did so. That instant boost helped a lot to digitize our business. In 2021, our online business ten folded from the year before, and now we plan continuing the growth journey.

However, it will be tough to sustain that trajectory. On the one hand, people are longing to go back to stores, to get out of the house, and to spend on things like travel instead. On the other, to grow the pool of accessible consumers, we still need to educate more, so that consumers are assured that plants will not suffer during delivery. With plants there's so much emotion – they are not just a product!

It sounds like there are some similarities between the fresh food and plant businesses. Do consumers have similar thoughts and reservations?

I think so! In food, everybody was always saying, “I will never buy my meat or my tomatoes online.” But now that people are used to it, they trust the quality to be the same. Of course, this is easier for younger consumers – but over 20% of our consumers are so-called “impatient achievers,” who don't want to make an effort or get soil in their cars. In a nutshell: We are early but firmly on a growth curve. It will all happen!

We are early but firmly on a growth curve. It will all happen!

How are you fueling that growth? What are your ideas for the future?

First of all, there is more to growth than digitization. For instance, we're looking into B2B opportunities – selling to municipalities, developers, and large-scale landscaping companies. But back to digital commerce: We are always scanning for new ideas and business models out there, such as all the new ones emerging around cut flowers. There's next-day delivery. There are subscription models. And there are apps for product identification: You see an amazing flower, take a photo, find out the name of the flower, and get directed to product offers and a lot more information.

Then, if you want to buy the flower, you click and find out everything about the product – where can you grow it, where it comes from, and how to take care of it. Maybe there's a huge community that likes that type of flower. Digitization will be really important, and it means we need to be and will be much broader in our offer. We can't just rely on what we have in the stores.