By Gustavs, founder of YourGreenHouses

Look at the last ten buildings you sold. Every one of them cost you money to get: lot rent, signs, Facebook Marketplace, weekends on the lot. How many of those ten customers will ever buy from you again?

Most of the lot owners I have talked to this year say the same thing: nobody buys a second shed. Gene Fox of 5-Star Buildings in Cuba, Missouri, told Shed Business Journal what a good sale looks like: "We want the customer to have a building in 10 years that they can look at and still say this was a good purchase and we don't regret this purchase." That is the right goal. It also means that customer is done buying sheds from you for a long time.

Repeat and referral is where the money is

Chris Winter, owner of Winterteam Enterprises and A Place for Your Stuff, a Derksen dealer in Texas, has been in shed sales since 2003. In a column for Shed Business Journal he wrote: "The car salesman approach that I wrote about earlier may get you a sale this time, but the value approach will bring you repeat and referral customers." And: "The shed dealers that make a six-figure income get there because of repeat and referred customers."

Charles Hutchins, president and CEO of Shed-N-Carport Pro in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, wrote the same thing in his ten core commitments back in 2016: "A satisfied customer can be your greatest advertisement." He pays for it: "I offer a referral fee to my customers when they bring me new prospects and I am happy to pay them for it."

Kris Zimmerman, owner of 5-Star Buildings: "We're not out to just drop off the shed, collect the check, and move on. We do want that referral." Fox: "I hear over and over again, my neighbor bought it."

So the industry agrees. But for a shed lot, repeat mostly means referral. The customer who bought the shed has nothing else to buy from you.

Lot rent is paid either way

Shannon Latham, owner of Shed Geek LLC, wrote in the magazine this spring: "If you're paying lot rent and covering costs for your own website, advertisements, and banners, it makes sense to broaden your product line." She adds two caveats worth keeping. Your consignment agreement may restrict what else you can carry. And branching out too far can distract from shed sales, which worries suppliers.

Read her line from the customer's side. You paid all of that to get one family to stop, walk the buildings and sign. The neighbor they send you costs you a referral fee at most. But the family that already bought, the one you know by name, is worth nothing more to you unless you have something else to sell them.

Dealers who sell more than sheds

Jim White, president of USA Portable Buildings in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, told the magazine: "We believe that you must make the most out of your customer base." He was talking about cross-selling: the customer who comes in for a shed sees the playsets and buys one, then or later. Two years after that he put a number on it: "Probably we would be hard pressed to say that playsets were more than 10-12 percent of our business, but that is more than you would get if you didn't carry them."

Neil Bryan, co-owner of Backyard Living Co. in Richmond and Metamora, Michigan, told the magazine: "With our diversity of products, they come in for a shed and end up purchasing furniture or pergolas too."

Jason Kloter, who handles sales of custom building projects for Kloter Farms in Ellington, Connecticut, in 2021: "In the winter here, you can't do sheds. You're around, but you've got a few months where shed sales are off. The indoor furniture does very well."

Best in Backyards, with locations across Connecticut and New York, is an outdoor superstore with a design team, not a gravel lot. What it does with its customers is worth copying at any size. It started about 30 years ago building swing sets, added sheds later, and, as the magazine put it, "Each time a customer would ask them to consider selling another backyard product, they would often add it to their lineup." It now has "an active database of 22,000 customers" and talks to them "weekly or monthly through emails."

None of them quit selling sheds. The shed still brings people onto the lot. They just have something else to sell once the customer is standing there.

Three questions

None of these dealers guessed what to add. Amy Therrien, assistant manager at The Carriage Shed in White River Junction, Vermont: "We find a need voiced by our customers and we try to fit that need." Best in Backyards added products when customers asked. Hutchins keeps a notebook with the name and phone number of every prospect and what they are looking for, so he can close them. The same notebook works for what you could not sell them.

Who has the customer's name and phone number after the sale: you, the builder, or the rent-to-own company? If it is not you, you do not have a customer list.

What did people ask for this year that you had to send down the road? Write it down for a month.

When did a past customer last hear from you?

What the same customer buys next

Look at what the dealers in this article carry beside sheds: carports and tiny houses (Winter), playsets (White), pergolas and furniture (Bryan), swing sets and whatever customers asked for next (Best in Backyards), indoor furniture for the winter (Kloter), greenhouses (The Carriage Shed, which added them "because we have seen more and more people trying to grow their own food"). Elsewhere in Shed Business Journal over the last few years: chicken coops, hunting blinds, utility trailers, saunas, shipping containers.

It is all the same yard. The family that bought a 10x16 has more they want to do out back, and the shed was one thing on the list.

Zimmerman says referrals are "our biggest draw, and that only comes from a long time, slowly getting this reputation." So what is the second thing on your lot?

Gustavs is the founder of YourGreenHouses, which supplies greenhouse kits wholesale to shed lots, garden centers and building dealers. Wholesale line: (786) 741-8612.

By Gustavs, founder of YourGreenHouses

In late August we sat down with Marty Boltres. He started Shed Builder Magazine in 2014, put out the first issue in 2015, renamed it Shed Business Journal along the way, and runs the Shed Builder Expo, which is in Knoxville this September. Most of the shed industry has come through his pages or his show floor at some point.

We asked him what matters most for a shed lot right now. He said the most important thing a lot owner can do today is diversify. Everybody already has a shed. A lot that lives on consignment commissions, with no stock of its own, makes very little on each building it sells. The job now is finding products with better margins for the people who are already walking the lot.

His magazine has been printing the same advice from dealers for years. We went back through the archive and pulled together what those dealers have said.

Everybody already has a shed

Shed Business Journal ran a business climate survey in October 2024. More than half of the dealers who answered, 54.2 percent, said 2024 sales were lagging behind 2023. Half said sales had dropped in the last month alone. One respondent wrote: "Covid soaked the market with sheds."

That December the magazine ran a roundtable it had recorded at the Expo in Grand Rapids. Most of the five people at the table were upbeat about 2025. Charles Hutchins, president and CEO of Shed 'N Carport Pro in Radcliff, Kentucky, even called it "a golden age in the shed industry." The part that matters here is what they said had changed.

Mark Walker, president and CEO of Platinum Rental in Cunningham, Kentucky: "the industry is down, depending on who you are, 15-20-30 percent of your sales. Now, you're looking for other ways to have more sales."

Matt Cook, vice president of specialty sales at Dairyman's Supply Company in Kentucky: "Prices are a little tighter. Margins are smaller. That's probably been the biggest challenge." And in the same conversation: "There's a lot of consolidation going on. The big boys are getting bigger."

Hutchins said saturation was already visible in his own town. "My hometown of Campbellsville, Kentucky, I think it has four or five big time dealerships there." He expects "some fat trimmed across the industry."

Tyler Mayhan, general manager of Better Barns in Oklahoma, described what oversaturation looks like from a lot: "There are actually some Facebook groups in our area that no longer allow shed sellers to post their sheds in their groups just because that has been so oversaturated."

The consignment math

Most lots run on consignment. The manufacturer owns the buildings, the dealer displays them and earns a commission on each sale. Peter Miller, a regular Shed Business Journal columnist, laid out the numbers in May 2024. Consignment "only allows you to make on average 10-12 percent." On a $6,000 shed that is $600 to $720. The same shed bought wholesale and sold off the lot would return "$1,500-1,800 on average."

Miller does not pretend the switch is easy. Wholesale means buying your inventory, and he only recommends it once you are moving 10 to 30 buildings a month. But he is plain about what consignment does to a lot that is not moving that many: the commission "can take a toll on you as [you] are struggling to sell enough buildings to make payroll/rent/expenses."

Shannon Latham made the same point from the other side in April 2026: "If you're paying lot rent and covering costs for your own website, advertisements, and banners, it makes sense to broaden your product line."

You are already paying lot rent, signs and advertising to get people to stop. If a consigned building is the only thing on the lot for them to buy, the most you can make on any of them is that $600 to $720.

What the dealers who added a second product line say

Neil Bryan, co-owner of Backyard Living Co. in Richmond and Metamora, Michigan, told the magazine in January 2026: "You have to ensure you are diversified. We are known as your home for backyard structures, and we have niche items like vinyl playsets and louvered pergolas." The result: "With our diversity of products, they come in for a shed and end up purchasing furniture or pergolas too."

Jim White, president of USA Portable Buildings in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, added playsets and, in a 2022 piece on them, put a number on it. "Probably we would be hard pressed to say that playsets were more than 10-12 percent of our business," he said, "but that is more than you would get if you didn't carry them." Two years earlier he had given the magazine his rule for the whole business: "We believe that you must make the most out of your customer base."

Gary Jackson, president and owner of Apex Shed Company in Springville, Utah, went with chicken coops. He told the magazine in November 2025 that they now bring in the highest profit margin of anything Apex sells, some 7 to 8 percentage points higher than sheds. "We're doing five or six of them a week now," he said. "It's a niche that's really worked well for us."

Jason Kloter, who handles sales of custom building projects for Kloter Farms in Ellington, Connecticut, solved a different problem with a second product line: the calendar. In 2021 he told the magazine: "In the winter here, you can't do sheds. You're around, but you've got a few months where shed sales are off. The indoor furniture does very well."

The magazine summed up why this works in November 2025. Dealers who add products are "often getting a more stable business model that can more readily weather the up and down cycles of individual products."

None of them stopped selling sheds.

How to pick the second product line

The archive has the warnings too, and they are worth reading before you order anything.

White again, in the 2020 piece: "Each location should take into account the fact of what your competition has to offer, but do not get so wrapped up in them that you try to follow the leader." And: "Stick to your bread-and-butter items that pay the rent. But when you do try something new, give it a prominent display area and put some good signage on it to garner attention."

Adam Nieder, who manages the door and shed shop at Ziegler Lumber Co. in Post Falls, Idaho, was talking about shed options when he said this in 2020, but it applies to any product you add: "You just have to find that middle ground of affordability and profitability. Offering something people want but also pricing yourself out of the market doesn't make sense."

Steve Byler warned in February 2025 that some product lines "consumed a lot of capital." That is the real risk: a second product that ties up cash the way a wholesale shed order does.

Amy Therrien, assistant manager at The Carriage Shed in White River Junction, Vermont, gave the simplest filter in 2021: "We find a need voiced by our customers and we try to fit that need."

What the dealers above agree on: bring in what customers already ask for, give it a real display and real signage, and do not tie up the cash you need for buildings.

What dealers are putting on the lot

The list in the magazine over the last few years: chicken coops, playsets, carports and metal buildings, pergolas and pavilions, outdoor furniture, hunting blinds, utility trailers, saunas, shipping containers, and greenhouses.

Greenhouses are the one we know, so we will be plain about it. Apex added greenhouses, dog houses and loafing sheds alongside the coops. "We have found a clientele that loves them," Jackson said, "and in our area of the world there is not much competition for those types of things." The Carriage Shed added greenhouses because, in Therrien's words, "we have seen more and more people trying to grow their own food." Dan Forte of Brad's Barns and Gazebos in Kingston, New York, explained in a January 2025 piece why a lot beats a website for this product: "You can't sell a greenhouse via photos. A customer needs to stand in it."

We sell greenhouse kits wholesale to shed lots, garden centers and building dealers, and we help each dealer set up the display and make the first sales. Whether a greenhouse pays more than a consigned shed on your lot depends on the kit and the terms. Ask us and we will run the numbers on your lot: call the wholesale line at (786) 741-8612 and ask for a 20-minute call with me.

Zachary Redder, general sales manager of North Country Storage Barns in Philadelphia, New York, put it this way in the same November 2025 piece: "It's important to be open to change because that's what the market's going to do. It's never going to stay the same, so you have to keep up with the times a little."

If you have added a product line that worked, or one that did not, we would like to hear about it.