No matter what we say about the way Smith and Hawken was run, or it's ownership by Scott's Miracle-Gro, the people who worked there are out of work. If you worked at Smith and Hawken, and enjoyed working in horticulture you might want to head over and join our group, Garden Centers, Nurseries, and New Media. It's a LinkedIn group that's made up of the best minds in the horticultural world. You can network with other like minded people, and perhaps find new opportunities in the world of horticulture. We have well over 400 members (444 as of today). Check it out here and see if it might help. Sid Raisch made a comment at my last post about the closing. He asks, "Maybe someone who knows for sure such as former employees and suppliers to S&H will chime in, but it is possible that Scott’s was an answer to problems that began much earlier. Is it possible that the concept of premium garden tools, decorative accessories, outdoor furniture, and related products was not scalable to a national retail platform? Did competition with other catalog companies become too intense, requiring the multi-channel Catalog-Internet-Bricks & Mortar expansion? There may have been individual stores that were well-run and self-sustaining but did they generate enough margin dollars to support the expense of the product design, sourcing, corporate systems and management overhead? Did the rapid expansion,top end growth, and outside investment mask underlying problems with the S&H concept? The store within a store at independent garden centers did have some merit, but did the wholesale margins really work? Lots of questions with the answers not apparent to draw a logical conclusion. What can others learn from S&H that will help them avoid making the same mistakes?"