Garden Sage: The Garden Nursery Sprouting Seeds of Success with Lightspeed

From Seed to Sensation. Garden Sage’s Story.

Meet Garden Sage - a haven for garden enthusiasts and green-thumbed dreamers nestled in the heart of Henfield, West Sussex. Garden Sage isn’t just a nursery, it’s a botanical wonderland, overflowing with vibrant blooms, lush foliage, and fragrant herbs. This fertile ground didn’t just sprout and nurture plants but a greater philosophy to spread a love for gardening; ensuring that every garden flourishes for seasoned horticulturists and the botanically inclined alike.

“The classic case for most garden centres and retail plant sellers is that their only concern is sales. There's no kind of help and assistance or one-to-one conversation anymore,” Ed said. “We want to be able to offer a bit more. In fact, in the last year or so, we've actually gone out and planted trees for people so we’re offering hands-on experience as well as just retail.”

Rooted in Value. Powered by Growth. Meet Lightspeed.

Growing a business is much like the growth of a flower; it can only thrive under the right conditions. Garden Sage was no different. After a number of “really, really, really clunky POS systems” where “everything was just very, very difficult to use”, Ed eventually decided enough was enough and started shopping around for a point-of-sale solution that wouldn’t wilt their passion to grow. After partnering with Vend, Lightspeed came along soon after, and it’s been a match made in heaven ever since.

“Lightspeed is more up to date,” Ed said. “Since we used Vend, Lightspeed has invested a lot more time in developing the software, so we’re able to do much more than we used to.”

Achieving Lightspeed Lift-Off

Partnering with Lightspeed often opens up a new world of possibilities that can allow budding businesses to take everything to the next level. Something Ed and Josie found out quite quickly. “We love all the features within Lightspeed,” Ed said. “The sales reports are really good. It's really comprehensive and we can get lots of different bits of information quite quickly.”

When it comes to managing a garden nursery, inventory management can become a chore due to the everchanging stock that Ed and Josie had to deal with. Lightspeed’s integrated inventory management tool tidied this up in no time.“ Managing our inventory, too, is quite easy now. Our stock changes quite regularly. We've got a lot of different variants. We've got everything from a small pot, to a tree and, we've got to do it again for like another 300 items and Lightspeed has been really versatile in allowing us to manage that. It's made my stock control an awful lot easier. And, bizarrely, it’s made labelling easier as well,” Ed continued.

Lightspeed’s electronic point-of-sale solution doesn’t just help with operations, either. “It's definitely helped us build customer relations as well because you've got the information to hand. We've got the information to use with customers so we can see what they've ordered before. So, if they forget a plant name, which is really regular, we can see what they purchased last time. And, then that means we can order another one for them, or something similar,” Ed noted.

Simple set-up with Lightspeed Payments

Making the switch to a more efficient payments system was the natural next step as Garden Sage moved from their previous payment processor to Lightspeed Payments.

“We were previously with iZettle, but we switched to Lightspeed Payments. It was just another integration which we didn't need. When we first started out iZettle worked, but Lightspeed's just simpler. Everything’s on the Lightspeed dashboard, so you can just pick it all out. Everything shows up in a way that's really easy to read. Plus, we haven't got another contract with another financial institution. It's definitely much easier.”