B-to-B deal broadens co-ops' L&G options - Brief Article

Members can enter 'rooms' on egarden 's site to select products and vendors

SAN FRANCISCO -- The industry's three largest buying groups have planted a seed with a leading business-to-business ecommerce provider, in the hope of encouraging growth in their dealers' sales of outdoor living products.

TruServ, Ace Hardware and Do it Best separately have entered into agreements with egarden, the B-to-B subsidiary of U.S. Home and Garden here. Egarden.com will offer each coop a "room" on its site where its dealer-members will be able to find a broad selection of lawn and garden vendors that are registered on the Web site.

After working out some minor details, like site links and member services, tests of the egarden.com marketplace will begin in mid-June. The market-place is scheduled to go live in mid-July.

The co-ops' 17,000-plus dealer-members sold more than $5 billion worth of lawn and garden products in 1999. However, even dealer networks this extensive aren't always aware of all the new products and services being offered by suppliers. That knowledge is expected to become more accessible through the egarden site.

"The real benefit for us is that [egarden has] the resources to recruit vendors that we currently don't have," said TruServ senior vp Don Belt. "Speed of market is the issue."

In their agreements, the coops can suggest which vendors should be added to their "rooms" on egarden's site. "Our goal is not only to populate the Web site with our existing manufacturers, such as Scott's, but to populate the site with some of the more regional vendors that our members buy from," said Kurt Zimmermann, TruServ's lawn and garden merchandising manager. Belt expects 3,000 of his co-op's dealers-members to buy placing orders with between 500 and 600 vendors via this site by the fall.

Ace expects nearly the same number of retailers to participate in the egarden.com marketplace this year, said Guy Duvall, merchandising manager for Ace's lawn and garden department.

"This is going to allow our retailers to have real-time management of things going on in the marketplace," Duvall said. "It's going to offer them a lot more products. This is really a big opportunity for our stores to compete in this marketplace."

Larry Pensinger, Do it Best's director of e-commerce, sees a number of logistical advantages for his co-op: perks include easier negotiating of terms with vendors and gaining access to more local suppliers, which would help reduce costs related to shipping bulk inventory such as live goods and statuary.

Buying options expand

The e-marketplace that egarden is developing for the co-ops will be an entirely electronic process, from searching catalogs to ordering to purchasing. Aside from the product variety it will afford dealer-members, the site will allow suppliers to show their merchandise to a broader audience in a timely fashion.

The co-ops will provide an egarden.com link for all their members. The marketplace will be accessible to members 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"It has the ability for us to be able to provide our membership with a fairly convenient single-source location on the Internet," Zimmermann said.

Duvall added that participating Ace members would be able to compare pricing of similar items from different vendors. "They can buy from different companies on one order form. These are all enhancements that will make purchasing products easier," he said.

Egarden.com has formed an alliance with GardenTrend, a manufacturers' rep firm for about 40 lawn and garden suppliers. GardenTrend will serve as egarden's direct sales force and provide online training to the co-ops' dealers that want to use egarden's site to order merchandise, according to Tom Goyda, an egarden spokesman.

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