Challenging Times Calls for Proactive Measures in the UK

anthonycurnow.com
The retail market conditions in the UK have been incredibly volatile at late, with the global financial crisis pressuring retailers nationwide. Nigel Eaton is Head of the Royal Horticultural Societies Wisley Plant Centre, which has responded to the changing retail environment in a proactive manner. Generating footfall is one way of increasing gross profit, and Nige presents some ideas which they have utilised over the past Spring/Summer season and which you too might be able to adapt to your garden centre.
Overview of the Season Past
At the end of 2008 retail sales in the UK had taken rather a pasting, even high street giants such as Marks and Spencer were offering “discount days” to draw in the customers.

I have managed garden centres through three recessions now, and luckily the garden centre industry has always weathered the storm well because of people staying put in their homes, making them as welcoming and attractive as possible during times of money shortage. On the back of this knowledge, the garden centre trade held its nerve and planned for a good spring and summer, and it paid off.

This year we were armed with “Grow your own” as a great marketing tool and the country took this to heart. This saw a significant rise in sales of vegetable plants, seeds and soft fruit [berries, currents and strawberries to name a few] as well as the accompanying garden care products. This included modular vegetable beds, hand tools, seed trays, cold frames, plant supports, any number of feeds, pest control and barriers. To demonstrate the British consumers love for growing their own, the waiting list for allotments now stands at 200,000. All this activity was rewarded with a great growing season so the public were successful in their activities which only reinforced the success of the campaign.

In addition to identified marketable trends, we held a number of events running for single days or weekends depending upon their potential attendance. With these we focused on a plant variety or collection of varieties to drive plant sales and link sales of garden care products. “Orchid Weekend” is always a favourite in our calendar in January [England’s Winter] and we saw a significant number of customers visiting over the two days for informal talks and potting demonstrations. We then had “Snowdrop Splendour” where we highlighted these beautiful heralds of spring, which saw a huge interest over the two days doubling our turnover from the previous year. “Hellebore Heaven” we have been running for a number of years, but this was still a strong draw as was our “Auricula Spectacular” and our “Riot of Roses”.

Now comes the interesting one - We held an “Agapanthus weekend” where we invited Jason Bloom of the famous Bressingham Gardens and Nurseries to speak. It was one of our highest attended events ever, with Mr Bloom speaking to a full house - in excess of 80 people at each presentation. On each of the 6 talks Mr Bloom advocated for other plant associations including Crocosmia (Montbretia) which also helped boost sales. Interestingly, Ryan Simpson our Australian Special Option Certification RHS trainee (who you will all know) informed me that these plants are weeds in Australia, and he couldn’t believe how the customers were so blown away by them!

I’m sitting here typing this article having just set up our “Fabulous Fuchsias” event (I can hear you groaning at all the tacky titles) and our speaker for the day is Carol Gubler the President of the British Fuchsia society. These plants have really come back into fashion with the arrival of new varieties that are much more floriferous, and the move back to planting in pots and containers. We had a hot summer in 2006 and the trend for container planting was badly hit by water shortage, (nothing like the water conservation needs in certain Australian states) but a knock on effect was the down turn in anything not planted in the perennial border planting.

The future is to find plant groups or ways of growing plants and make them “aspirational” or “on trend” and then get the nursery producers to build on this process with new or improved varieties. Over the last two years we have seen a significant increase in varieties of begonias, grasses, geraniums and hostas and we are hoping to highlight these next year. Improved means of displaying short life bedding plants have also shown significant inventiveness as the wall display in the image demonstrates (Anthony article 001).

For 2010 we are looking forward to showing our customers planting combinations and colour themed displays to impress and inspire. Hopefully we will also see the upturn elsewhere in the economy, while retaining customers we have gained at the plant centre through these austere times. We as an industry make peoples lives better, we improve their environment and on the whole we keep people aware of the seasons that no other industry manages to do so well. The few things I have mentioned here are opportunities that we should all embrace and encourage, as a means of building a sustainable future for independent garden centres world wide.

Anthony’s Response
While much of what Nige presents here has gearing towards the UK market, it is how you interpret and disseminate these ideas to provide you with opportunities for growth. Planning the year ahead is particularly important as it gives you sufficient time for promotion of events, which is ultimately essential for success.
A few things I wish to highlight are the importance of planning and promotion of such events in garden centres. Appropriate planning will allow for smooth implementation, a professional approach to marketing and also allow you to tap into potential networks in the community (such as specialist plant interest groups). These ties with affiliated associations and community groups is key to an event with credibility. Finally, making the event measurable, and not just by counting the amount of people attending allows for appropriate decision making for future events to ensure maximum return on investment is achieved.