NAICS 44424Industry · 5-digitlocal market

Nursery retailers and garden centres

SoftwareBuilding Materials Dealer ERP 444

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in retailing nursery and garden products, such as trees, shrubs, plants, seeds, bulbs and sod, that are predominantly grown elsewhere. These establishments may provide landscaping services. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 1,089
Under 10 employeesA: 57%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–438335%

5–923522%

10–1923622%

20–4917016%

50–99565%

100–19981%

200–49910%

500+0—

Of 1,089 Canadian establishments with employees, 57% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario42639%

British Columbia20819%

Quebec17516%

Alberta878%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Retail Trade, US · opened 2020

88%

1 year

72.3%

3 years

59.8%

5 years

44.2%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 444, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

local competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 444 Building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers

Independents survive on contractor trade, rural location and buying-group membership rather than on price.

Who sets the price: Big-box competitors on commodities; service on the rest.
The software it runs on: Retail and contractor-desk point of sale, often shared with the wholesale yard.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 4442 Lawn and garden equipment and supplies retailers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4442

Garden Centre & Outdoor Power Equipment DealerStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

Two unlike shops share this code. The garden centre is the one people want to open, and what is attractive about it is real: plant knowledge and locally grown stock are things a big box does badly, and the customer will pay for both. The cut is the calendar. The only Canadian operating data found — a 2010 trade-magazine reader survey, small and self-selected — has 45% of a garden centre's sales landing between March and May and 7% in winter, with 27% of respondents reporting margins of 1–4% and another fifth answering 'Profit? Are you kidding me?' [C]. A year of fixed cost — land near enough to households to draw them, greenhouses, heat, a core staff — is carried on roughly ten spring weekends, in perishable stock, against weather; and in those same weeks every grocer and home centre sets up a parking-lot tent selling bedding plants at or near cost. The survivors are overwhelmingly families that already own the land and often grow their own stock — which is to say the business works once the capital is sunk and written off, and not before. The outdoor power equipment dealer runs on different rails: the right to sell a major line is granted dealer by dealer by the manufacturer, and the service bay rather than the showroom earns the living. That half was not examined beyond noting it, and it sits closer to the landscaping-contractor trade already screened at 561730 than to retail. The dealer ERP on this branch is screened separately.

NAICS 44425 vendors named12 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 444 Building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers

Building Materials Dealer ERPOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

Incumbent Epicor BisTrack and ECI Spruce

Two private-equity estates — Epicor and ECI — hold the lumber and building-materials yard, and both bought their way in rather than building. The buyer runs a yard, a delivery fleet and a credit book on one system, so the replacement risk is operational and the incumbent knows it. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 4443 vendors namedOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Retail trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail sales supervisors One industry 84.7%

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 80.1%

Cashiers and other sales support occupations One industry 80%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 69.7%

Pharmacists and dietitians Mostly one sector 61%

Medical technologists and technicians One industry 23.6%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 18.7%

Cooks, butchers and bakers Mostly one sector 15.7%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 12.2%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 11.2%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 13.5%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 8.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 8.2%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 6.7%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 6.6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 6%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 5.7%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5.4%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 5.3%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 44424. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
444240	Nursery retailers and garden centres	1,089	screened at 4442

Alongside it, under 4442 Lawn and garden equipment and supplies retailers

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
44423	Outdoor power equipment retailers	270	screened at 4442