Adams Fairacre Farms keeps quality control all in the family - Brief Article

Home Channel News, July 16, 2001 by Andrew Carlo

Poughkeepsie, N.Y.-based farm market relishes change

In its 82 years, Adams Fairacre Farms has evolved from being a small family-owned farm market into three farm and garden centers in New York's Hudson Valley region that last year generated $68 million in revenue. The company is still changing, as it's in the midst of a $4.5 million renovation of its headquarters location. That project will add 10,000 square feet to the 65,000-square-foot store in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and include the addition of 4,000 square feet to its lawn and garden center.

Several landscaping crews work out of this 24-acre location, which also provides delivery, planting and fence-installation services. An 8,400-square-foot modern barn on the premises serves as a showroom for outdoor power equipment, which includes tractors, chainsaws, weed whackers and blowers. Adams even sells some pool supplies out of this sire. When the renovation project is completed, Adams intends to add other departments, such as a candy shop and cafe.

This company is a survivor, however. Its 40,000-square-foot store in Kingston celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Its Newburgh location, which Adams opened in 1998, includes a 60,000-square-foot store on 13 acres.

As its Poughkeepsie facility has done over the years, Adams Fairacre has grown as a business to keep from withering under the competition pressure being exerted daily by mass merchants that have greatly expanded their own lawn and garden repertoire.

The company branched out to a roadside farm market in the 1950s and launched a lawn and garden department in the 1960s. Now 30 percent of its annual sales is generated from landscape, outdoor power equipment, fencing and live goods. The company currently employs 500 full- and part-time workers, and is still very much a family affair: Ralph Adams Jr., 79-year-old son of the company's founder, is its president; his brother, 69-year-old Donald, its vp; Patrick, Donald's son, is the company's secretary. The elder Adamses still work at the company's three stores on a daily basis.

Patrick Adams told NHCN that the company's lawn and garden department has grown steadily and now includes between 50,000 and 60,000 items. During this period, a number of independent nurseries and garden centers in surrounding markets have dosed. "There's less competition from garden centers and more from home centers," Adams said.

"We try to be competitive through selection and a variety of good quality merchandise," his father added.

Adams Fairacre Farms is one of an expanding number of garden centers around the country that grow their own live goods to control the quality of what they sell. Its grower business -- which is owned by Mark Adams, Ralph Jr.'s son -- is separate from the rest of the company, although it gives Adams' stores the first chance to buy what it produces. "It gives us a leg up on the competition by having our own supply," Donald Adams explained.

As thousands of new homes have sprung up in the Hudson Valley, perennials and trees have been big sellers for Adams Fairacre. Last year, the Poughkeepsie store doubled its perennial sales. "I can't hold some in stock," said Randy Gore, nursery manager at the Poughkeepsie outlet, which sells between 1,200 to 1,500 pieces per week. "Anything that has a flower on it people will buy. That's what's been the budding business." Patrick Adams referred to customers' attraction to the color of plants and flowers as "instant gratification."

"Everything is very fresh ... they carry products others don't carry," said Fran Hollander, a Woodstock, N.Y., resident who was shopping for garden supplies in the Kingston store recently. She said that she also preferred shopping at Adams because it relayed a "small-store feeling I grew up with."

Patricia Garrison of Palenville, N.Y., said she routinely drives more than 30 minutes to shop at the Kingston store because "you can do everything here. Buy your gardening materials, flowers for your table and food for your table."

On the hardlines side, Adams Fairacre relies on its affiliation with dealer-owned buying group TruServ. Patrick Adams said that this relationship has worked out well for his family's company. His father, though, said that the stores don't try to compete on price with home improvement dealers like Home Depot and Lowe's. "We try to be competitive through selection and a variety of good, quality merchandise," he said.