Ellison Chair in International Floriculture
Ellison Chair in International FloricultureTeaching, Research, Extension and Service

Early registration extended for Southwest Growers Conference

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Attention all growers! The early registration deadline has been extended to June 30 for the annual Southwest Growers Conference that will be held in Conroe, TX on July 8-9, 2008. Refer to the conference website (http://swgrowers.tamu.edu) for more details and to register.

On Tuesday, July 8, there will be tours to four innovative nursery/greenhouse operations.

On Wednesday, July 9, there will be a full day of timely educational sessions at the Lone Star Exposition Center. Two morning sessions will focus on the practical and economic applications of environmental sustainability. Afterwards, a session on hiring a legal work force will cap off the morning program.

In the afternoon, there will be sessions on water quality and alkalinity, controlling new insect and disease pests, the use of PGR’s, reducing weed control costs, and a laws/regs session to cap off the day. TDA Certified Pest Applicator CEU credits as well as TNLA CEU credits will be available.

Register now for the early-bird discount! It’ll be worth the gas, I promise!

Which windfall profits should we tax?

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Let’s proceed with a game I’d like to call … Pick the Profiteer! Your choice will indicate the industry that’s clearly making more than its fair share. We’ll tax those excess profits to subsidize the unreasonable prices that consumers pay for the industry’s products. Sound good? Here are your choices:Take all the time you need.

Ready to tax that windfall? That was pretty easy, right? Clearly the oil company is C, the one making the most money off of every dollar of sales. Nope! Actually, that’s Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO). And B, the company with the second-highest margins, is 3M (NYSE: MMM).

Hmm. Fine, then it must be E, right? It is, after all, the company earning the most relative to the amount invested in the business. Sounds like excessive profitability to me! Well, that would be Accenture (NYSE: ACN).

Let me stop you — it’s not A, either, which I should note also happens to sport the highest free cash flow growth among the five. That would be Apple (NYSE: AAPL). Whichever “parasitic” company you chose, I hope you’re ready to fire off a missive to your senator, demanding an excise tax on those rip-off Cherry Cokes, Post-it Notes, consulting contracts, or iPods.

While the sheer size of a company like Chevron (NYSE: CVX), company D, translates to some eye-popping profit numbers in absolute terms, I would hope this exercise gave you a little more perspective on Big Oil’s profitability relative to its large-cap brethren.

Thanks to Toby Shute for the game idea.

Phantom recession???

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“A funny thing happened on the way to the most predicted recession in US history: it didn’t happen.” I’m not fulling embracing this quotation just yet, but it is interesting commentary by Wesbury and Stein. Click here for their full elucidation.

New IPM blog available

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The East Texas Nursery and Nursery Greenhouse IPM Program has recently added another method to distribute information — the “East Texas Nursery and Greenhouse IPM Program Blog” at http://etipm.blogspot.com/. This site will have regular updates regarding advances in greenhouse and nursery pest management, meeting information, efficacy study results and newsletters. If you would like to have updates emailed directly to you the day they are posted, go to http://etipm.blogspot.com/ and simply enter your email address.

On the Road Again

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After being out of the office at 5 different meetings over the last two weeks and talking to literally dozens of folks about their business performance this spring, I am convinced now, more than ever, that those who are successfully differentiating themselves from the competition are weathering this economic contraction better than those who aren’t.

Not that there isn’t some belt-tightening going on. There is plenty of that, but those who are focused on their marketing strategies [and even expanding them] are confident that they are gaining ground instead of losing it.

Ecomomic Rx for Business

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“In good times, running a company is exhilarating. Money is flowing, customers are happy, employees have a spring in their step. In not-so-good times—like now—the very same job can feel like scaling Mt. Everest in a snowstorm while wearing a knapsack filled with bricks and suffering from a bad case of the flu.”

In the latest Florists’ Review magazine, Quint Studor offers “Eleven Ways to Infuse Your Company with the Leadership Skills to Thrive in Tough Times” — a good read. For more, click here.

Another good read is George Whalins article on “Strategies for a Changing Retail World” — click here.

Other good reads include:

Don’t Just Survive—Dominate
When the Going Gets Tough…
Maintaining Strong Sales During the Summer
The Upside to a Downturn
The Business of Retail is Going to be Brutal in 2008

Largest minimum wage increase in 50 years

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Fellow blogger Mark Perry makes a good point. In nominal dollars, the upcoming change in the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour in 2007 to $7.25 per hour in 2009 will be a 41% increase. In real, inflation-adjusted dollars (assuming a 3.8% increase in 2008-09), it will be a 25.5% increase, and will be the largest 2-year increase in the real minimum wage in at least 50 years (see chart below — click on it for larger view).

Register NOW for the 2008 Southwest Growers Conference!

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Attention all growers! The early registration deadline is approaching for the annual Southwest Growers Conference that will be held in Conroe, TX on July 8-9, 2008. Refer to the conference website (http://swgrowers.tamu.edu) for more details and to register.

On Tuesday, July 8, there will be tours to four innovative nursery/greenhouse operations.

On Wednesday, July 9, there will be a full day of timely educational sessions at the Lone Star Exposition Center. Two morning sessions will focus on the practical and economic applications of environmental sustainability. Afterwards, a session on hiring a legal work force will cap off the morning program.

In the afternoon, there will be sessions on water quality and alkalinity, controlling new insect and disease pests, the use of PGR’s, reducing weed control costs, and a laws/regs session to cap off the day. TDA Certified Pest Applicator CEU credits as well as TNLA CEU credits will be available.

Register now for the early-bird discount!

Increase marketing now!

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It really has been an interesting week of economic news:

  • Real GDP growth has been better than expected (good).
  • Real personal disposable income grew at highest rate in months in April (good).
  • Consumer confidence dropped for a fourth-straight month to 59.8, the lowest since 1980 (bad).
  • Unemployment’s only running at 5% while interest rates are quite low (good).
  • One-year inflation expectations grew to 5.2% (bad).
  • Falling housing prices continue to be a significant source of down-side risk to the economy (bad).
  • The EIA is forecasting gas prices below $3.50 by the end of this year, and below $3.00 by the end of next year (good).

Bottom line for green industry firms: As I have said many times, stay the course. Also consider increasing your marketing expenses. Yes, you read that correctly. Increase your spending on marketing right now! As others are making cutbacks (and marketing is usually the first thing to go during hard times), increase your marketing efforts to gain increased “mindshare.” While you should be spending 3-5% of gross sales on marketing normally, consider increasing this to 5-8%.

Speak when others are quiet and even a whisper can be heard. Imagine if you shout.

Real Disposable Income

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Buried inside yesterday’s BEA report on April Personal Income (tables available here, see Table 10) is the statistic that “Real Disposable Personal Income” grew at an annual rate of 1.82% in April 2008 compared to April 2007, the highest rate of growth since December 2007 (see chart above). This will probably not get a lot of attention from the media, but provides some additional evidence that the U.S. economy is not on the verge of recession, and might in fact actually be “moderately” healthy.