Speaker: Keith Berns, Managing Director & Chief Flower Grower at Berns Garden Centers and Landscaping

My Educational Programs / Sessions @ Cultivate

Creating a New Business to Address A Changed Market
Sunday, July 16 • 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
This topic, Visioning to 2025, started at Cultivate 2021. In 2022, we laid the groundwork for businesses of all sizes, to think differently; asking businesses to question if the 2020-2021 growth curve, while transformative, may not be sustainable.

In 2023, the series continues with three panel discussions that will focus on still evolving aspects of the new business model. From the 18 million new consumers who entered the channel in 2020 to the new definition of online selling, the industry will hear from business leaders from across the country who are working, thriving and growing into the quickly changing business model that will be used by plant sellers in the consumer horticulture channel in 2025.
In panel discussion TWO: Hear how 3 businesses are recreating their business model to addresses a changing marketplace.

About Our Speaker:

Keith Berns, Managing Director & Chief Flower Grower at Berns Garden Centers and Landscaping
Keith Berns is Co-President and Owner of Berns Garden Centers and Landscaping. He is a greenhouse grower by trade and is now working alongside his family to see the Berns Organization into its third generation as a family-owned business.

After graduating from The Ohio State University, Keith developed his technical skills as a grower, focusing on propagation, at a plug and liner rooting station. After six years of training outside the family business he joined Berns Garden Centers and Landscaping in preparation for the 2015 spring season. He has since been learning about garden center retailing, landscaping, business, and leadership.

Berns Garden Centers and Landscaping offers a wide range of horticultural products and services with the purpose of bringing plants into people’s lives. They are successful doing this because their team connects with each other and with their customers, and because they are committed to the best plants and horticultural practices. They find efficiencies and advantage through integration among their divisions. Berns operational divisions include two retail garden centers, a design/ build landscape firm, a personal gardener service, and a greenhouse growing operation.

Keith has always been close to the green industry and horticulture. He is happy to spend his time in a greenhouse, garden center, or garden. His wife Claudia, son Kevin, and daughter Mia Camila share the sentiment, or at least pretend to.