As the year draws to an end I am wondering what happened to this year! Over the past months, I have been President, it has been great to catch up with many of you and learn more about your businesses and see the exceptional quality of work that is being done in our industry.
The future ahead is exciting for members, who can identify the challenges and are open to the changes in our industry? Change seems to be the buzzword, in all scopes of business activity. Ten years ago yellow pages were our main source of advertising, now it appears to have little or no value.
Interior Plantscape Association (IPA) has been fortunate to have the opportunity of submitting an article to Hort Journal Magazine, every month. We have endeavoured to showcase some of our members in those articles and we thank Gabe Mostafa and his team for their continued support.
If you are going to embrace changes for your business in 2019 make sure you can also evaluate where your leads are coming from. Is your website up to date? Do you have programs like Geo, for planning your daily runs and incorporating invoicing which can be linked to your accounting system? Is your social media accounts kept up to date?
There are many stories about business owners who embrace social media. I was fortunate to speak with a lady recently who opened a gift shop and after three months she was only making enough money to pay the rent. When she opened her social media accounts her business grew rapidly so, never undervalue the benefits of social media. When it comes to the many changes in technology there is a lot to take on board. And in 2019 technology won’t be the only change for Interior Plantscapers.
Clients are demanding more and gone are the days of ‘plonk a plant’, and add a cotta pot. Get creative in 2019 and embrace the many exciting changes ahead.
On behalf of the Executive Committee, we would like to say thank you for your continued support and we wish you all the very best for a happy, healthy and relaxing Christmas.
See you in 2019!
Arthur Stacey – President 2018