Garden.com: Growing By Its Own Rules

Garden.com doesn’t have a plan for the longevity of its catalog. But Sharples said it will never replace the Web site as a revenue generator or become one itself.

“The Web site is the bricks and mortar of the company. It has content, community and commerce, there is a lot more on the Web site than purchasing. Are all of those things likened to sales?—yes. But the catalog is a catalog. It doesn’t have a lot of articles, no community, no interactivity; it is just a catalog. With the Web site they realize how much cooler it is and how much better the quality is online—[hopefully] pulling them off-line to online.”