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pryder@datateam.co.uk The strangest of years
It has been the strangest of years, with many sages of the industry saying they cannot recall a year with so little weather in our favour, saysPeter Burks, Chief Executive of the Garden Centre Association.
T
his has definitely led to reductions in sales performance across many categories with only the traditional poor weather performers,
catering, food halls and farm shops, giſtware, clothing and indoor living, seeing sales improvements over last year.
This has come at a time of rising costs, particularly salaries, with a 20% increase in minimum wage in the last two years, driving the salary costs dramatically higher. This is now initiating significant discussions on where the industry goes next to mitigate these costs and remain profitable. Plant care is an area where the change to growing in peat-free composts has caused watering regimes to be altered due the variations in the compost that different batches of plants are grown in, as well as the variability of water retention of different composts. It has become very difficult to have a single approach to watering a planteria especially on very hot days. Often the only staff working in the planteria now are all on watering duties. General maintenance and the overall care of the whole area have been significantly reduced. It is something that I think we need to look at regarding the overall size and stock holding of our planterias. Whilst indoor areas do not require the level of attention that the outdoor plants do, we need to consider what changes could be made to these areas to free up staff to help elsewhere. Here, I feel, we need to consider the ranges of garden care products we stock. Is one variety of slug pellet adequate? Larger
GCU Autumn 2024
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stacks of a single product do not need such continuous replenishment whilst still giving a feeling of authority to your offer. Good advice, whether this is being offered via QR codes on the shelf or via robots, would also help the need for staff to be present in all areas. Security might become an issue if there are fewer bodies on the shop floor, but again technology might help here too with several good facial recognition cameras alerting you when known offenders are in your centre. The early summer sees the end of the annual inspection window for our member garden centres. Every GCA member garden centre gets an unannounced visit from one of our team of four expert inspectors during the three-month period from mid-March to mid-June. There are 218 individual factors that are inspected and scored, usually out of ten, which cover every area of the garden centre, from their appearance from the roadside to the toilets, restaurant and every retail area including compost, garden care, garden hardware and containers. It also includes three random phone calls and email enquiries, and a review of each garden centres social media. Every centre must score at least 50% to remain a member of our Association, so it is a way of maintaining the standards of our members, as well as a tool for all members to use to improve their standards in any given area. It’s great to see that the highest scoring centres in the garden care and hardware section are scoring in the high 80 to low 90 percents. Almost perfect! We are very grateful to GIMA for their continued sponsorship of the award in this category.
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