Serving a niche

You don’t have to be a large, 100-something staffed greenhouse to be known across the country, or even across the world. Michael Kartuz can attest to that. He is the owner of Kartuz Greenhouses in Vista, Calif., a small, family-run business that solely focuses on rare and exotic plants, reaching plant hobbyists and collectors across the globe.

“We have our own market for this,” Kartuz says. “People have found us and we have our followers all over the country that support us.”

Offering more than 1,000 varieties of unique plants such as Clivia and Thunbergia, Kartuz’s customers are not looking for your typical petunia or impatien. The Internet has played a big role in connecting Kartuz to his customers.

“Google has been a great help,” he says.

In fact, if you type “rare and exotic plants” into Google, Kartuz’s website is the first result.

“If someone is looking and doing a search [for a plant we offer], our name comes up,” he says. “And there are certain plant families that we specialize in. We introduce a lot of our own varieties, in this respect. We do hybridizing; we’re always searching for new varieties to add to our list. So we do that. We keep up with that sort of thing.”

The Internet has also been able to help save some costs. Kartuz Greenhouses used to offer a catalog, but when it found out 90 percent of its orders were coming from online, the company decided it was time to stop printing it to save some money.

While technology is only a tool that has helped Kartuz, he believes his real success stems from having perseverance and offering something different.

“Try to look for things you don’t see anywhere,” he says. “Find your own special niche and follow it and work on it. I think that’s the best thing to do. If you do something that everyone else is doing … that’s not going to work.”

Want to know more?
Learn more about Kartuz Greenhouses by calling (760) 941-3613 or visiting www.kartuz.com.