Built on honesty and good products
T&T Seeds T&T catalogues, then and now. What a difference 70 years make!
T&T build their catalogue in-house, the good old fashioned way. Here, Kevin Twomey checks a page layout.
The retail store has developed a reputation for warm, friendly service and for carrying everything a gardener could need — and then some.
T
&T Seeds, in the mail-order business since 1946, is celebrat- ing its 72nd year in 2017.
The company was started by Jerry
and Paddy Twomey, who operated T&T together until 1967. That year, Jerry sold to Paddy, who continued to run it until he was joined by his eldest son Kevin in 1974. Kevin took over the management in the late 1970s and has been the general manager since. In 1981, he was joined in the business by his younger brother Brian. Kevin and Brian Twomey are the
current owners of T&T Seeds and they have developed a reputation for provid- ing a good product at a fair price, but more, they are respected by the commu- nity for the generosity and warmth they extend to everyone with whom they come in contact. Over the past number of years, Kevin has become the trust- ed and well-known expert in the local gardening industry
as the alternate
radio voice for The Gardener on CJOB whenever host Dorothy Dobbie is out of town. Kevin always has a ready and down-to-earth answer to gardener’s questions based on his own extensive knowledge and his unending curios- ity about the world around him. If, in the very odd instance he doesn’t have an answer, he will go to the trouble to find out. Brian is the silent partner who does much of the work on the catalogue and
64 • Fall 2016
other behind the scenes projects at the store. Together they make a very effec- tive team. T&T Seeds has specialized in early
season garden seed and nursery stock for the home gardener since its incep- tion. The bulk of the business has been carried out in the prairie provinces, with British Columbia and North- western Ontario being a steady source of customers. Since 1993, however, more and more business has been coming from eastern Ontario which has contributed to a renewed growth of sales that have been steadily increasing. When it started out, T&T Seeds
was located in the Exchange District of downtown Winnipeg. The first location was 120 Lombard Pl. where the mail order operation was run in 10,000-square-feet. That location is now a parking lot. In 1975, the operation moved across
the street to the second floor of 111 Lombard Pl., upstairs from what was then Brick’s Fine Furniture. Here, over the next 20 years, T&T Seeds expanded to 35,000-square-feet. The largest growth occurred after 1985, when T&T began handling and ship- ping its own tree and shrub stock. Over $200,000 was invested in large, walk-in coolers for storage of dormant plants. This enabled perishable product to be kept dormant until shipping time, thus providing a healthy product for the
customer to transplant. No other seed company in Canada has the extensive refrigeration facilities of T&T. In the summer of 1997, T&T relo-
cated to a small acreage on Roblin Blvd. in Headingley, Man. A new 16,000-square-foot warehouse was built
for distributing orders across
Canada. At the same time, the refrig- eration accommodation was restruc- tured, thus improving storage facilities for the perishable stock. At this site, several greenhouses were constructed for the production of a wide selection of bedding plants. With the change of location, T&T now had a second dimension, a year-round retail store facility, which retains the down home feel of the catalogue, as well as the expanded seed and live-plant shipping capacity. It may not be widely known, but the company also prints its own seed packages. This new location has provided an efficient site for the quick processing of the mail-order business. Over its 72 year history, T&T Seeds,
has become one of the leading garden supply mail-order houses in Canada. It is the first catalogue out each year, appearing without fail in late Novem- ber, early December. They sell a wide selection of garden
sundries and even a line of health products, both in store and through the catalogue. T&T actually offers five catalogues in one, supplying a wide
localgardener.net
All photos courtesy of T&T Seeds.
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