PREVIEW: GLEE GATHERING
Growing through the crisis D
DIY Week speaks to Mark Portman, Managing Director at Evergreen Garden Care about the effects the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the garden care sector and the Evergeen business, the future of peat-free media and his thoughts on the virtual Glee Gathering event taking place this month.
IY Week: We are all only too well aware of
the
faced this year due to
Covid-19, what effects
challenges but
have
you seen on the garden care sector? Have there been any positives? And how has Evergreen Garden Care as a business been affected and dealt with the crisis? Mark Portman: It has been an extraordinary year, and the pandemic has presented a valid mix of challenges and opportunities at the same time. At Evergreen Garden Care, we focused on five key priorities to help structure our thinking and plans as we navigated through the crisis. Our top priority was to ensure the safety of our team, our customers and
our suppliers. A key challenge was to maintain our production capacity, whilst ensuring the safety of all our teams, particularly those working in manufacturing and warehousing who all did a fantastic job during a very challenging time. As garden centres and DIY stores
reopened in April, we experienced a strong demand for our portfolio with some weeks having triple digit YoY growth for key lines in both growing media and all fertilisers, with exceptional of levels of demand for Tomorite still continuing. This unprecedented demand placed strain on our supply chain, and we had to make difficult choices of which products were manufactured, ensuring constant communication with our customers.
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Most recent Kantar data captured at the end of May, tells us that almost 2.7m more people bought the category in the season in comparison to 2019, and that 43 per cent more shopping trips took place. We also know that gardeners are gardening more than ever before, have expanded their repertoire of gardening jobs and projects and have prioritised having a safe and healthy home. This has offered the total industry a unique opportunity. At Evergreen Garden Care we decided to continue to support the category when lockdown was announced at the end of March, we took the brave decision to continue with our commitments of investing £2.5m into a multimedia campaign from Miracle-Gro throughout April, May and June. For the 2020 season Evergreen Garden Care’s brands were the only brands supporting ATL, with the campaign expanded across TV, PR, Digital, social media and
influencer channels. The
campaign also appeared on ITV’s Grow your Own, Love Your Garden and This Morning via our brand partnership with Horticulturist David Domoney. We re-worked our social media content to adapt to the current needs including content about how to grow your own and things to do in the garden with kids, supported by biweekly Facebook Live sessions with David Domoney. We are now working on how to nurture both the newer and loyal gardeners, and this is key to retaining the new found love and appreciation that the public have found of their green oasis, no matter how big or small. It is with this thinking that we have just launched our Autumn Campaign, Welcome Autumn into your Garden.
DIYW: Unfortunately, due to Covid- 19, we’ve seen a number of industry events such as Glee cancelled. What do you think about virtual online events? Can you see live events coming back and recovering? And in their absence, how do you intend to
connect with customers and promote your products?
MP: We have made an enormous effort to continue to communicate with our customers throughout the
DIYW: Evergreen is launching a huge new range of peat-free growing media. This is presumably to meet an increased demand from customers wanting more peat-free alternatives? Is this something you see continuing?
MP: Yes, we are delighted to announce that after many years of intense product development work
at our in-house research
station at Levington, Ipswich we have developed and will launch a
comprehensive range of peat
free compost from the two leading brands in the category, Miracle- Gro and Levington. At Evergreen Garden Care, we have been on a long journey of reducing our use of peat year-on-year and have always taken our responsibility to care for the peatlands seriously. We’ve done so by working alongside many partners including Nature England to help restore the peatlands. The launch of a full range of peat
free compost is the next step in that journey. It is important that the industry helps move gardeners to peat free solutions that meet all of their gardening needs. This is what we are doing with our launch; the same two leading brands, the same portfolio, the same high quality, but now available in Peat Free.
AUGUST 2020 DIY WEEK 17
crisis and have already shared our 2021 plans with them in a virtual way, but there is always an element missing when not able to do so in a physical setting. Glee offers an opportunity for everyone across the industry to reconnect for a key couple of days, creating an environment to reflect on the season that has just been, the learnings we can glean from it, and where we can look forward to the next season. Of course, another important aspect of the event is highlighting the new products and our new in-store execution plans. If the Glee Gathering manages to re-create this via a virtual event, it will be a real success. We will support the industry by being there and will all be fully available to meet with our customers and will join the panel discussion. So far, we have put lots of planning into how we can convey and share our 2021 plans, so that they feel confident in knowing what we are proposing.
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