GCA CONFERENCE
your businesses is in that bit. This is good because it’s a huge chunk, the biggest chunk in household spend, and taking the time to understand a little bit more about what is driving your consumers, you’ll find that non-essential element of household spending is up for grabs across many different businesses,” he advises. Paul describes his background in working on Computer Weekly, a business IT Magazine, where he learnt that in order to reach the top, you have to be prepared to be one step ahead of your competitors, he says: “When I worked there, we used to say the point of computing is everybody can eat everybody else’s lunch. That is, a competitor can come and eat your business – but you can also do it them.”
The leisure economy “The actual garden economy, according to the Office for National Statistics, is quite small. Garden
tools spending per week is 80p. “Now of course we don’t go into a garden centre and spend 80p,” he laughs. “But what we do is we go every month etc, and buy something small.” Domestic
services including
gardening, is £2.10, horticultural goods (of which plants and seeds) is £3.80. This is technically your bread and butter, or at least it was until the revolution of the most important plant that any of us will ever do business with, which is the coffee plant,” he jokes. Another category for garden economy is museums and gardens. “Don’t forget that one,” Paul says. “People, on average, are spending 50p a week to go into a museum or a garden, places like Kew Gardens. The garden economy is there. But that’s technically quite a small per week spend by the British consumer on the things that I could find in the household spending statistics. But the leisure economy is huge.
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Recreation and culture, family spend £74 a week on. That’s the cinema, that’s going to the football, bowling, ice-skating etc.” Not only
are British families
diveryting a large proportion of weekly spend towards recreational activities, they are also taking the time to eat out and spend money in restaurants – a trend that Paul believes garden centres with catering offers can capitalise on. He says: “It is stunning that, given that the food spending in supermarkets is at about £78 per week, families are still spending on average about £50 a week on meals out. So, this is an amazing space that some of you probably have, or you may be close to.”
Added opporttunities
Another category included in the garden economy statistics is ‘personal care’. “I’ve only put this in because it is the other big stand-out item,” says Paul. “I’m not thinking there’s a huge amount of personal care going on in your businesses but occasionally you will see hairdressers or those little franchise businesses attached to bigger
businesses like a garden
centre,” he adds. British people are spending £140
14% 10% 42% 34%
Accept the deal on the table and get on with it (14 %)
Go back to the EU and negotiate a better deal (10 %)
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Leave in March without a deal (34 %)
Have another referendum (42 %)
a week to go out and feel good, and I want to say to all consumer facing businesses with places to go – fill your boots – because that’s good. Now, to understand what is driving this.” Paul Mason tells garden centre owners: “People want to be in the places that you run – this creation of another space, where a consumer wants to be for a long time, feel good, meet people, sit with their laptop or a book, or just talk. “The coffee market changed consumer behaviour, and it’s every person with a laptop that chooses to go to these ‘trendy’ retail places, and that’s a successful business purely because it understands who is coming and why they want to sit here. It’s becoming obvious now that your sector is becoming a cafe/restaurant with some plants attached,” he jokes. “But the consumer has colonised this space for their own use, and this is now an amazing new opportunity where people want to spend money and feel good in places they didn’t expect.”
Deal or no deal?
Paul brings up a chart which shows all the constituencies in Britain who were for Theresa May’s deal for Brexit, and the results showed only two, Chichester and Roxbourne.
“They’re so small you can barely see them, but they are in red,” he laughs. “But what is going to happen to consumer activity because of Brexit? The most accurate answer I can give you – I have no idea. Simply because, every five minutes the situation changes. But, what we do know, is that there are a huge set of risks ahead of us.
He continues: “The good news is that the difference between staying in the European Union and not staying in but doing what Labour and the Tories are all trying to do with a deal, is pretty minimal. Compared to the economic crisis in 2008, where the economy fell off a cliff, it is minimal. When all of this political angst is over, in economic terms, there is a relatively small difference,” he explains. “The only problem about Brexit that is keeping me up at night, economically; What the bank is worried about,
and what you
should be worried about, is a ‘no-deal’ Brexit. “A ‘no-deal’ Brexit will take you into the red bit of the graph. The kind of talk-to-the-hand-because- the-face-isn’t-listening-type Brexit, will see the economy fall this year.” But, Paul adds, reassuringly: “In my heart, I’m not worried about it because I do not believe it will happen.”
Short-term disruption
Showing a slide depicting what a no-deal Brexit would mean for the country, Paul tells delegates, “nobody is going to let that happen. It’s being used as a scare tactic . But you run businesses, where real people get scared.” He continued: “31% want ‘no deal’, and if they want it and are being told by stories in the press that it might happen, then you need to be aware of a short-term disruption in consumption.” However,
he finishes “Whatever
presentation on a positive note, explaining:
happens,
household spending is going to be diverted to stockpiling. But, if you are a business that usually thrives in the spring/summer months, once Brexit is out of the way, consumers will be ready to spend again!” Encouraging retailers to hone their offer and make sure they capitalise on that spend when it comes, he says: “Remember, the service is the product! All my experience in garden centres would suggest that you all know that. For businesses that get service wrong, it is theatre, it’s fake, but for the businesses that get it right, it’s real and comes from the heart.”
08 FEBRUARY 2019 DIY WEEK 17
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