East Austin Succulents Blossoms with BigCommerce
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Summer time is in full swing, and what higher strategy to have fun than so as to add to your rising plant assortment?
However for East Austin Succulents — Austin’s most numerous and artistic cactus and succulent nursery — trying to find uncommon and attention-grabbing vegetation is a year-round mission.
From agave to bougainvillea to Texas plumeria, EAS is dwelling to all kinds of distinctive air vegetation, timber, herbs and shrubs. With a working greenhouse and a retail nursery, the blossoming enterprise is a haven for plant lovers throughout Central Austin.
Rising to New Ranges
Starting in 2009, EAS has since thrived as a solely brick-and-mortar nursery, however in 2020, the group determined it was time to go digital.
“We existed all over the place however the web, and we had a fairly well-established status in central Texas,” mentioned EAS’s customer support supervisor and assistant net store supervisor, Rachel Harris. “However no one else actually knew about us, and we thought it was time to alter that.”
To assist broaden the nursery’s attain, the group constructed the East Austin Succulents webshop — which now serves plant lovers not solely in Central Texas, but in addition throughout all 50 states.
Nonetheless, with the webshop launching in the course of the peak of the pandemic, EAS not solely needed to navigate easy methods to promote on-line for the primary time, however that they had additionally lately closed their retail nursery and transitioned to appointment solely.
“We had been having to navigate easy methods to permit for orders to be fulfilled in-person via our net store, but in addition easy methods to ship them out. We had been studying so much suddenly, nevertheless it was an enormous win as a result of we’re nonetheless right here,” mentioned Harris.
A Budding Success
In actual fact, the webshop didn’t simply assist EAS survive the pandemic — it was a seed that will assist the corporate develop like by no means earlier than.
“Our Instagram already had individuals who had been asking to purchase issues on-line, and all our social media has solely grown since launching on-line. Plus, our e-mail publication subscriptions have grown drastically,” mentioned Pam Humphrey, EAS’s net store supervisor.
On prime of celebrating the two-year anniversary of its webshop, different huge wins for EAS embody changing into a Star Vendor on Etsy and a High Vendor on eBay. With the assistance of its BigCommerce retailer, EAS has solely grown and grown, establishing itself as a novel, high-quality plant nursery.
And that features the packaging and transport of vegetation for its on-line clients. However whereas packaging a cactus might look like a troublesome feat, Humphrey claims transport day is her favourite day of the week.
“We ship all of the vegetation with a lot love and care,” Humphrey mentioned. “After we pack one thing, we additionally take into consideration how somebody will unwrap it and it’ll be in its new dwelling. Packing is a really big day for all of us.”
For the Love of Crops
No doubt, the EAS group loves all issues vegetation. From discovering a uncommon mutation or a variegated plant they haven’t seen earlier than, to discovering child possums of their greenhouse, Humphrey and Harris agreed that working at EAS comes with no scarcity of surprises.
However among the finest components of East Austin Succulents is how they foster a neighborhood of individuals round vegetation.
Recalling an occasion with an Etsy buyer, Harris defined how the client had forgotten to order a warmth pack together with their plant buy. So, the EAS group messaged the client and supplied to ship them a warmth pack without spending a dime. However as an alternative, the client kindly supplied to purchase 5 warmth packs as a “pay it ahead” for anybody else who forgot to purchase a warmth pack sooner or later.
“They didn’t have to do this,” mentioned Harris. “Nevertheless it was only a good second of plant individuals looking for different plant individuals, and in addition plant individuals looking for us.”
The Closing Phrase
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