A Talk with September’s Profile, Rob Johnston Jr., Founder and Chairman of Johnny’s Selected Seeds
Profile of Success, Catalog Success magazine, September 2007
Interview by Joe Keenan
Catalog Success: When was the catalog established?
Rob Johnston Jr.: The catalog was started in 1973. I was the original founder at the age of 22 when I started the catalog on a farm in New Hampshire.
CS: What is your primary merchandise?
Johnston Jr.: Seeds. From vegetables, flowers, herbs and farm seeds for covering crops. Vegetable seeds make up 70 percent of our business.
CS: What was your biggest initial challenge?
Johnston Jr.: The biggest challenge was the day-to-day operations of running a business. The creativity or the energy to do the work was never an issue, just not having run a business before was the biggest factor.
CS: How did you overcome that challenge?
Johnston Jr.: I overcame the challenge by gradually growing the product which allowed me to hire people to run the business end of the company. I was able to focus on the creative and product development aspects and let the business people handle the business issues.
CS: What about the business appeals to you?
Johnston Jr.: Product development is what is most interests me. When a home gardener tells me that I have helped him grow a certain flower that he has never been able to grow before, it makes me feel good. On the commercial end, helping people make a living through our seeds is gratifying. The success of my customers fuels me.
CS: What is your current biggest challenge?
Johnston Jr.: Transitioning from private ownership to employee ownership, who hold 30.5 percent of the ownership today. I’m an amateur at selling a company. It’s going to be an adventure making that change, going from a friendly monarchy to group ownership (board of directors).
CS: How do you deal with the increased postal rates?
Johnston Jr.: In the end we’ll experience about a 15 percent increase in postage this fiscal year. We had two options. Either produce fewer catalogs to offset the cost of the postage increase, or budget for the increase. We chose the latter. Our catalog is a critical element of our business and we weren’t prepared to sacrifice it.
CS: What sets your company apart from others?
Johnston Jr.: I like to think our product and service. We have a fairly unusual product line, vegetables make up 70 percent of our business. We do a lot of field research. There’s a vertical integration of product development to product production. We’re very strict on our service standards, our orders are filled very quickly. It doesn’t take much effort to stay caught up and we take a great deal of pride in our results.
CS: What do you do to keep things more fun at the company:
Johnston Jr.: We have a monthly staff luncheon organized by our G.M. Mike Comer. We have sponsored an in-house union for the employees that is allowed to meet on company time without management present. I may be biased, but I think it’s a great place to work.
CS: Have you had any mentors?
Johnston Jr.: When I was first starting out in the business, I patterned my work after the Harris Seeds company of Rochester, NY. They were a family commercial/home gardener company with a strong vertical integration. I also admire technical seed breeders.
CS: What are your hobbies?
Johnston Jr.: I love to ride my bike.
