Family founded and operated, Barn Owl Garden Center has been serving its green-thumbed community in Carol Stream, Ill., since 2003. It’s a place where locals go to get all their plant needs as well as invaluable, personalized gardening advice that only an industry expert can provide.
But Barn Owl Garden Center isn’t your average gardening store. They sell more than 11,000 unique SKUs of plants and gardening supplies online and in-person, provide landscape services, and even host community events.
This multifaceted, community-driven business model is working. The garden center has seen a 40% increase in repeat customers year over year, which has led to a 7% increase in transactions without any other significant investments — all while keeping the team size the same. Since joining Square in 2022, the business has grown 15%.
We sat down with Barn Owl Garden Center owner, Clark Hudmon, to understand how the store uses the Square ecosystem to grow and operate the multifaceted business.
Finding a competitive advantage against big box retailers with events and services
To compete against massive retailers, Barn Owl Garden Center is getting creative to maintain its place as a long-cherished local business. In addition to its huge variety of retail products, customers can also lock in landscaping services and attend the center’s community events, which bring people together and boost Barn Owl’s bottom line.
We have a farmers market and try to bring in local vendors every Saturday. It’s a great way to promote our community and the products we have. Creating these events make people curious about what’s going on at the barn. My favorite thing is when I see two family members run into each other — verses when you go into a big box store it can feel so cold. We need to show folks why we may be more expensive than Amazon, for example, – it’s the knowledge, the atmosphere, etc.”
Clark Hudmon → Owner of Barn Owl Garden Center
Diversifying revenue streams helped Hudmon make the business less susceptible to weak points and downfalls — and it’s also created a runway for taking calculated risks. Once his team adopted Square, shifting to a more tech-minded operation with lots of analytics gave them a competitive advantage in an otherwise traditional industry.
Right products, right place, right time
To keep the business running smoothly with thousands of SKUs, Barn Owl Garden Center needed a POS system that automatically tracks online and offline sales while providing real-time insights to inform the business strategy. Using Square for Retail, Hudmon is able to track inventory across all sales channels and generate detailed reports that inform promotional plans and offer more accurate orders from suppliers.
Square enables us to be knowledgeable and agile by accurately reporting on sales and inventory so we aren’t spending more than we need to. These reports help us understand what we sold so we know how much to order from our vendors.”
Clark Hudmon → Owner of Barn Owl Garden Center
Hudmon keeps the business running smoothly using features like barcode scanning, customizable buttons for older items without SKUs, and the ability to easily add product variations. These capabilities have streamlined the checkout process for employees and brightened the customer experience by reducing wait times.
Modern technology customers and employees can get behind
Just because Barn Owl Garden Center has been serving its community for decades doesn’t mean they need to run on outdated technology. Hudmon had the foresight to adopt a technology partner that would help streamline payments and checkout — without slowing down the less tech-savvy proclaimed employees.
When it comes to hardware, while Barn Owl Garden Center’s staff loves the larger screens and keyboard compatibility of Square Register and the ease-of-use of Square Terminal to improve efficiency, they’ve also found helpful applications for the mobile payment methods Square offers.
“We use Square Terminal especially for pop-up shops around the holidays. It allows our business to become mobile. We’re about 27 miles outside the city of Chicago and we try to bring our flavor into the city with pop-up events. It also works as a line breaker, for example on Mothers Day, we can go up to folks waiting to take payment quickly.” Hudmon explains.
Getting employees up to speed on plants is a whole lot more complicated than their POS software. “With the younger generations there’s almost no training at all. Taking care of plants is much more complex. We don’t even think about training people on Square because it’s so intuitive. Even our 69-year-old employees find it easy to understand.”
Using in-store learnings to expand online
Even though local marketing and connecting with their community in real life is at the core of what Barn Owl Garden Center does, Hudmon had aspirations to continue to grow the business beyond the greater Chicago area. Barn Own Garden Center now reaches customers nationwide through their online store. “We’re leveraging an online presence,” he says. “This gives us an advantage over some of our traditional competitors in our space, some who have 60–80 more years experience than us.”
Using their online presence and the insights they receive from Square, Barn Owl Garden Center has been able to uncover niche opportunities where they have a leg up on competitors. For example, they sell a lot of bird seed that’s cheaper and higher quality than other traditional eCommerce giants. “We thought that could be an opportunity for online growth for us by using SEO, for example,” he said. ” Going the eCommerce route is another way we can strengthen our business and be more adaptable.”
Creating plant fans and lifelong customers with loyalty incentives
Getting a customer through the doors or to make a purchase online is only the first step to building brand loyalists. In addition to providing the best possible shopping experience for buyers, packed with invaluable gardening expertise, Hudmon knew a loyalty and rewards program could keep customers coming back. Barn Owl Garden Center implemented Square Loyalty. The program’s simplicity, requiring only a phone number for enrollment, has encouraged customer participation.
Our customers absolutely love the loyalty program. We double the points on Small Business Saturday,and we’ve found a lot of success with that. I’ve tried many loyalty systems in the past and how easy and simple Square’s is is great on my end and great on my customers’ end too.”
Clark Hudmon → Owner of Barn Owl Garden Center
Barn Owl Garden Center also capitalizes on the built-in integrations Square offers when it comes to email marketing. “The nice thing is it’s a simple email template so it’s quick for us to put together,” Hudmon said. “I like being able to add products directly from the online store.”
Spending less time on admin tasks
Running a large operation with a lean team, Hudmon needed to find ways to cut time spent on administrative tasks, like bookkeeping. Since switching to Square Invoices, Barn Owl Garden Center has been able to increase on-time payments from commercial clients by almost 20% and to streamline billing processes for the business, particularly for corporate and school clients with unique tax requirements.
The seamless integration of Square Invoices with the eliminates the need for separate receipts and automates emailing invoices to clients, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction for Barn Owl Garden Center.
“Now with the invoicing piece, all these different folks don’t need to get their receipts because it goes directly to accounts payable,” Hudmon says. “It’s easy to track on my phone. Everything is super seamless. It took literally 4-5 steps out of what we had to do. And our customers love it because they aren’t tracking down things like a receipt – it’s emailed directly to them.”
Growing toward the future with Square
Since ramping up its operations with Square, Barn Owl Garden Center uses point ofsale, loyalty programs, email marketing, online store management, invoicing, and more. As the team runs its day-to-day fueled by tech, Hudmon can focus on giving customers the taste of nature they crave while growing the business in new ways.
“Looking forward. there’s a big opportunity for us to expand and sell our quality products beyond our zip code,” he said. “Having these different opportunities as we grow and finally getting better at what we do, it’s all possible with Square.”
