Dobbies, now the UK’s largest garden centre chain, has partnered with specialist plant care app SmartPlant. Dobbies to digitise its indoor and outdoor plant ranges for spring 2020.
Following last year’s retail acquisitions and ongoing development of dobbies.com, the deal signifies the retailer’s ambition to merge its online and offline offering and enhance plant care information.
Dobbies will work with its suppliers to add their plants to the SmartPlant app to promote brand provenance and specialist care tips. Many of Dobbies growers have agreed to support the move and plants in-store will be activated in the SmartPlant app.
Users will benefit from planting instructions, automated care reminders, plant and pest identification and expert chat.
The SmartPlant app, which launched in 2017, enables customers to instantly unlock deeper variety-specific content through their mobile devices.
Marcus Eyles, Dobbies’ horticulture director, said: “The SmartPlant partnership is tremendously exciting for Dobbies garden centres both from an online and offline perspective and we see enormous potential going forward. This will help us to better inform and engage our customers whilst learning from unparalleled customer insights.