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association comment It’s a more virtual world, but it’s also


“much better than expected” A viewpoint from Will Jones, chief operating officer of the British Home Enhancement Trade Association (BHETA)


Back at the start of the 2020 season no-one would have predicted a virtual ‘Glee Gathering’ and not a Glee. Equally, as we all started to realise that Covid-19 was not just something that was making imports from China more challenging, few of us anticipated just how many suppliers and retailers in the home and garden industry would actually trade as well as they did in an unprecedented period of lockdown.


BHETA has just carried out one of its periodic member surveys testing the temperature of the home and garden marketplace following these last few extraordinary months. Maybe surprisingly for some, the headline findings are overwhelmingly positive. 83 per cent of members report sales during lockdown as being ‘better than expected’, while 63 per cent go as far as to say, ‘much better’. Remarkably more than three quarters of survey respondents said that they expected to hit or exceed budget for 2020, despite the pandemic and the effects of a resulting recession. I must acknowledge at this point that the many gardening suppliers who belong to BHETA are in garden tools, equipment, growing media and outdoor leisure products and not horticultural stock, which clearly had specific issues associated with a live product. Having said that, it is clear the amount of time everyone spent in the garden translated into sales. Let us look at some of the specific statistics supplied to BHETA by its data partners, including GlobalData.


47.6 per cent of consumers purchased a gardening or outdoor living


product in Q1 when lockdown began to bite with gardening as a sector up 3.4 per cent and outdoor living by 3.7 per cent. Helped by the very sunny weather huge numbers of consumers spent more time in their outside space than ever before, many acknowledging that ‘the garden’ was one of the most important things that made lockdown emotionally survivable. Whether it was using gardening tools and equipment or creating a more attractive outdoor space by painting outdoors, improving fencing, decking and paving, sales have been the result. Google reported a doubling in the number of searches for garden tools and watch-time on YouTube of how-to videos on subjects like growing vegetables was up 65 per cent, with emphasis on ‘step by step’ content aimed at ‘beginners’. Now it is the outdoor-living categories such as outdoor furniture and outdoor eating which are the big performers as consumers enjoy the fruits of their earlier labours and as gardens become the nation’s socially distant entertaining space and holiday destination. The importance of the garden has perhaps never been greater. Rightmove has reported searches for homes with gardens leaping by 42 per cent in May, increasing to 84 per cent among renters. While that is a huge bonus for the industry, it begs the question of where


and how did all these sales take place – especially when many traditional outlets were closed for at least some of the time under consideration. The BHETA survey again sheds light on the experience of the membership. The home and garden improvement suppliers who did best were the ones who could sell direct to the end consumer though their own websites, through ‘local’ retailers who stayed open, or quickly re-opened, or through retailers with good e-commerce sites. Moreover, when asked about the lockdown’s impact on business structure, strategy and future planning, a significant majority of respondents said that they were actively reconsidering their best routes to market. Equally, they were relooking at their marketing and communications activities in terms of how best – going forwards - to engage the consumer and persuade them to purchase. The outtake seems to be that while lockdown changes in consumer behaviour have created some positive economic opportunities, which are here to stay, the industry will only continue to reap the benefits if it too embraces the changes forced upon it and turns them to good. Like having a Glee Gathering for example. Even by May of this year online sales in DIY and garden was up by 15.1 per


cent and it has continued to rise as a proportion of total transactions, and both suppliers and retailers ignore this at their peril. Figures from the period up to the end of June show Amazon sales up 40 per cent and Wayfair over 80 per cent. eBay too has experienced a remarkable rise in its numbers of home and garden customers – customers which it now expects to keep. Garden centres are and always will be destination retailers and so bricks and mortar will always be a vital part of the sector. To quote a recent comment from the Chair of another great destination retailer, the John Lewis Partnership: “Shops will always be crucial ……, but they will be in support of online. Over the next five years, we expect to rebalance our shop estate so that we have the right space in the right locations where people want to shop.”


So, BHETA is now busy helping members maximise the possibilities of retailers’ online platforms, and the need to develop digital and ecommerce capabilities themselves. In September, we resume our series of webinars enabling ecommerce set up, the creation of commercially sound digital strategies and the driving of sales with social media. I urge all garden members to take part if they have not already done so. Continued success means continued change.


10 | www.gardencentreupdate.com GCU Autumn 2020


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