Plant brands that retailers in Europe sell are often own retail brands or trademarks that consumers don’t recognize. In America it is all about consumer brands. Growers put them on the market with lots of promotion and marketing. That regularly leads to success.
In America, branded plants have been sold for years. They are brands that consumers have learned to know and recognize when they see such a plant, the name or logo of somewhere else. In fact, it was almost a century ago that the first nursery set to work with branding: in 1926, Monrovia began selling all its garden plants with its own company name.
Around 1996, Monrovia deliberately sold its brand exclusive to independent garden centres, in order to maintain the quality of the brand. That was accompanied by the subname ’Distinctively Better Plants’, to make it clear to consumers that Monrovia plants are ’remarkably better’ than plants they could buy at big box stores: these are large retail stores in America that offer everything for home and garden, at competitive prices.
You can read more about branding in the States in the new digital magazine of Floribusiness.
