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Making AI Simple, Smart & Accessible for Garden Centers

Posted on by Kurt Fromherz

When I attended the MAICON 2025 Conference, I expected to come home with a few new ideas. What I didn’t expect was to leave with a clear vision for the future of Sunrise Marketing — one that blends human creativity with the power of AI to help garden centers grow smarter, not harder.

MAICON (Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference) brings together marketing leaders, innovators, and educators from across industries to explore how artificial intelligence can make marketing more intelligent, efficient, and accessible. I went to learn how the latest AI tools could support the independent garden center community — from simplifying customer engagement to streamlining marketing efforts that too often feel overwhelming for small business owners. What I found was far more than technology trends; it was a roadmap for using AI to amplify the creativity, connection, and care that make our industry so unique.

🌼 From Digital Tools to Full-Fledged Strategy

For years, Sunrise Marketing has helped garden centers connect with their customers through tools like the Sunrise Marketing app platform, loyalty programs, and targeted digital campaigns.

Those tools aren’t going anywhere — in fact, they’re about to get even better.

At MAICON 2025, I saw how AI can simplify complex marketing tasks that often feel overwhelming for independent retailers.

💡 Imagine creating a full season of personalized promotions, optimized content, and customer insights — all guided by smart tools that learn from your data and your goals.

That’s where Sunrise Marketing is headed.

🤝 A Turning Point: Partnering with Prxy AI

One of the most exciting moments at the conference was meeting the team at Prxy AI, a market research company redefining how businesses understand their audiences.

Their data-driven insights and narrative analysis tools will help Sunrise Marketing move from simply providing marketing products to offering deep, strategic guidance backed by real consumer intelligence.

This collaboration marks an important evolution — Sunrise Marketing is becoming a full-service horticultural agency that brings advanced, AI-powered strategy within reach of every garden center.

🔍 Deeper Insights Through Prxy AI: Turning Data into Garden-Centered Strategy

What impressed me most about Prxy AI is how it transforms raw data into emotional understanding.

Their platform doesn’t just analyze what customers say — it uncovers the “why” behind their decisions. For garden centers, that’s a game-changer.

Prxy AI helps us move beyond basic demographics to reveal the deeper motivations driving plant purchases.

🌿 Are customers creating a sanctuary? Teaching their kids about nature? Supporting pollinators?

With AI-powered emotional analysis, we can pinpoint those motivations and design strategies that truly resonate — from seasonal promotions to loyalty programs.

🔄 Ongoing, Real-Time Market Research

Unlike dated market studies that capture a single moment in time, Prxy AI allows us to perform ongoing, real-time research — continuously tracking how consumer motivations evolve with the seasons, economy, and cultural trends.

📊 That means your marketing stays fresh, relevant, and perfectly aligned with how your customers are thinking and feeling — right now.

🌟 How Sunrise Marketing Will Use Prxy AI to Help Garden Centers Grow

  • 💬 Emotional & Narrative Intelligence – Identify the core emotions that drive your shoppers — pride, peace, creativity, sustainability — and weave them into every ad, display, and post.

  • ⚡ Rapid Insight-to-Action – Get insights in days, not months. Pivot mid-season, launch timely promotions, and respond quickly to emerging trends.

  • 🎯 Segmented Storytelling – Use AI-driven persona mapping to create content that speaks directly to different audiences — from new homeowners to native-plant enthusiasts.

  • 🛒 Smarter Merchandising Decisions – Connect emotional data to purchasing behavior. Know what to stock, when to promote it, and how to display it for maximum impact.

  • 🤝 Human + AI Collaboration – Let AI uncover the patterns while Sunrise Marketing provides the horticultural context and storytelling expertise to make insights actionable.

✨ The result? A marketing approach rooted in data, guided by emotion, and tailored to how real customers shop, garden, and grow.

With PRXY AI, Sunrise Marketing now delivers big-brand insight with small-business understanding — empowering independent garden centers to market smarter, personalize better, and grow stronger than ever.

🌾 What This Means for You

AI can sound intimidating — but it doesn’t have to be. Our mission is to translate cutting-edge technology into simple, actionable tools that work for the way garden centers actually operate.

Whether it’s smarter ad targeting, automated email personalization, or predictive inventory recommendations, we’ll help you adopt AI in a way that feels natural — not technical.

🧠 Instead of relying on outdated market reports, garden centers can now access live, evolving insights that reflect how customers are thinking, shopping, and planting in real time.

And the best part?

💸 We deliver all of this for a fraction of the cost of a part-time employee — giving you professional marketing power, without the payroll pressure.

The bottom line? You don’t need to become a data scientist to benefit from AI. You just need a partner who understands both your business and the technology — and that’s exactly where Sunrise Marketing comes in.

🌻 Growing Together into the Future

This evolution isn’t about replacing what works — it’s about building on it.

As we move forward, our goal remains the same: to help independent garden centers grow stronger, connect deeper, and stand out in an ever-changing marketplace.

🌤️ Innovation doesn’t have to be complicated — it just has to be rooted in understanding, creativity, and care.

I’m excited for this next chapter — not just for Sunrise Marketing, but for the entire garden-center community. Together, we’ll redefine what it means to grow smarter.

🌟 Ready to Grow Smarter?

Discover how Sunrise Marketing and Prxy AI can help your garden center unlock the power of data-driven storytelling and customer insight.

👉 Visit SunriseMarketing.ai to learn more and start growing with AI — simplified for your success.

Kurt Fromherz