A 10 year digital transformation journey for Cincinnati’s largest nursery
Natorp’s is a nursery wholesaler for landscapers, landscape suppliers, and retail consumers. What started as a simple landscaping operation has blossomed into a 334-acre nursery, an acclaimed landscape design firm, and a sprawling outlet store. But what sets Natorp's apart is their ability to keep up with the times.
For over a decade, USDP has worked with Natorp's as they’ve re-invented their online business model, allowing their regional empire to thrive in an increasingly-digital world.
Starting the journey with Natorp’s
After more than a century in business, Natorp’s knows its customers well. Owners Kyle and Nikki Natorp developed a keen understanding of their operation, identifying how retail and wholesale buyers operate. With more than 300 acres of nursery space, Natorp’s had a solid in-store experience allowing shoppers to find exactly what they were looking for.
As online shopping grew in popularity, the Natorp’s team needed to keep up. They wanted a digital store so customers could purchase plants online with ease. This digital transformation, however, posed a distinct challenge.
How could they create a browsing experience that matched the in-store process, incorporating complex inventory management and order fulfillment? Could they actually sell plants and trees online for pickup or delivery? This digital feat was uncharted territory for their industry, so they enlisted the help of USDP.
Natorp's Roadmap
USDP has worked with Natorp's for more than 10 years, taking their digital marketing to the next level with messaging, branding, and eCommerce.
Strategic direction: planning for a digital age
Messaging and branding: Understanding the business
Website Development: Managing Plant Inventory
eCommerce: Building an Online Nursery
Going Beyond Results
In the years since developing the plant library, we have worked closely with Kyle and Nikki to make enhancements to the system, handle data differently, and adapt with their exciting growth. They have had tremendous success with their new website, growing online sales each year and putting more and more inventory online.
Natorp’s ongoing digital transformation has cemented them as the dominant garden center and nursery in the Cincinnati region. Their adventurous attitude toward continuous digital innovation helped Natorp’s thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic, when regulations changed the way in-person business could be conducted.
It wasn’t easy for Natorp’s to invest the time and money into eCommerce and create an online nursery. Kyle Natorp and his team worked hard to craft an experience customers would love, and the reward of new sales growth made the vision pay off entirely.
Now, entering into our second decade of partnership with Natorp's, USDP continues to support Kyle and Nikki as we find new ways to improve their 100-year-old family business.
A note from Kyle at Natorp's
"US Digital Partners helped us to create a seamless online shopping experience for our customers, leveraging our internal ERP system data to integrate our inventory and business processes into a beautiful ecommerce platform. I would recommend [USDP] to a friend or another business just because our experience has been so great and they are easy to deal with. They listened to what our challenges were and what our unique situation was and provided us with something that was unique. You don't want something that's just like everybody else. You need something that's going to work just for you. US Digital Partners did a great job of doing that for us.”
— Kyle Natorp
