association comment Quality and quantity
Garden Centre Association (GCA) chairman Mike Lind sees a positive path ahead for garden centres, and has seen a rise of members at the GCA.
It’s been a busy summer for our member garden centres and for all of us here at GCA HQ.
Finally, the sun started shining for us at the end of June and into July and we even reached heatwave temperatures, so our member garden centres were very happy indeed, especially after such a mild start. Our regional awards meetings in July were a huge success and saw a great turnout. It was fascinating to hear all of the feedback from our inspectors and our members took it all on board and have already started putting new ideas and changes into practice. In order to remain a member of the GCA, our members have very high standards to meet and are inspected annually to ensure they maintain them. Through sharing of best practice and our comprehensive inspection programme, we aim to help our members achieve the highest standards across all areas of their business including customer service, merchandising, plant quality and marketing. Our awards are the pinnacle of success for members. Each year the quality
just gets better and better and members thrive off the success of each other. It just goes to show how beneficial these meetings are for our member
garden centres and how helpful they can be for their businesses. We’re now looking towards the latter part of the year and once again, the horticultural industry’s largest exhibition, Glee, is nearly upon us (September 10 – 12, 2019).
We will have a stand that attendees can visit in order to find out all about us and what benefits we can offer to garden centres who join us. We will have information packs available for garden centres and suppliers interested in membership and we’ll be able to answer any questions people might have too.
So far this year, we’ve had a record number of 10 new members join us. These include three centres from the Klondyke Group, an additional centre for Perrywood Garden Centre, as well as six other independent garden centres from across the country.
We accept applications at any time of year, so if there are any centres out there thinking of joining us, then please don’t hesitate to do so and do come and say ‘hi’ if you spot us at GLEE.
• For further information about the GCA, please call 01244 952170. Alternatively, please visit
www.gca.org.uk, log on to
www.facebook.com/pages/GardenCentreAssociation or follow the organisation on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/GC_Association.
Visual merchandising can double
housewares sales Will Jones, chief operating officer of the British Home Enhancement Trade Association (BHETA) discusses the opportunity in style trends in the housewares category
Housewares including everything from table linen to glassware, cutlery to crockery, kitchen gadgets and bakeware to the latest in small electrical appliances are big news in garden centres. Sales are year-round and immune to the weather and clever retailers can make the most of destination shopping, giſting and impulse buys. It’s also a category where good visual merchandising can really make a positive impact on sales. The demonstration of just how well a purely functional piece of kitchen equipment works in practice – chopping, dicing, cleaning, grilling food or grinding coffee – will always attract the shopper and provoke the impulse buy. When it comes to static display, however, it can be harder for retailers to quantify exactly what return can be generated and therefore to judge exactly what investment – whether in time or money or space – to put into it. So, I was
GCU August/September 2019
delighted to discover at a recent meeting of BHETA’s housewares committee that one of BHETA’s members, a company which supplies both housewares and garden products has just carried out some instore research on the subject. In tableware, while the consumer may consider the substrate of the bowl or the process used to achieve a particular finish on a fork or spoon if it is explained to them, the real decision making factor is the design, the fashion, the colour or the texture that goes into achieving the overall look. And the overall look can only be appreciated properly when it has been set out to entice – on a table. Of course, this overall look plays an important part in kitchenware too, but there it is the feel, weight, space and efficiency ratios that clinch the deal. The crucial factor in all of this is that both suppliers and retail buyers are fully aware of the style trends which will drive consumer taste in good time to exploit them whether on a dining
table or in a demonstration kitchen. So, for any retailer who has doubts about investing precious space in the visual impact of the display and the demo, a 93% upturn is a pretty good reason to eradicate such doubts and just do it.
• Further information about BHETA and the trends to look out for can be found at
www.bheta.co.uk or by calling BHETA Member Services on 0121 237 1130.
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