In This Issue
When will the For Sale sign go up at Wyevale GCs?
November starts with a bang for Ponsettias
Residents oppose housing plans for Klondyke Cheshire site
Garden centre customers update their wardrobes for new season
German buyers at ‘Meet the International Buyers’ event
SmartPlant app aims to lighten load on plant staff
Martin Stewart apologises over Santa tickets as 10,000 requests crash website
Vitax announces groundbreaking charity partnership
Kent & Stowe silent sales assistant builds Lawn spend
Bonnetts Garden Village opens for business
Holly and Mistletoe Auctions return to Burford Garden Store
Santa's grottos at Squires raise money for charity
Hillier celebrates the Magic of Christmas
Tong launches its biggest ever Christmas weekend event
Cheeky innuendo takes garden centre customers by surprise...
Get your own copy of GTN Xtra
Helen MacDonald appointed HTA Council representative for Scotland
Christmas plants lead November upturn
EU fails to resolve glyphosate issue yet again
Wonderful boost for vertical gardening
Haskins Garden Centres announces competition to celebrate National Tree Week
Poppy feeder sales up by 57%
Hortipak continues support for HTA National Plant Show
Angels increase lead at the top of Christmas chart
Turnover up at Wyevale-owned Woodcote Green
Agent for Briers in the South East leaves company
The best of last week's
"Garden Centre of the Future" planned for new outlet retail centre at Downtown Grantham
RHS licensing a stepping stone to success for Kelkay
Smart Garden Products expands export team
The Pied Piper of Melville - GTN's interview with Nicholas Marshall
Bestsellers Top 50 charts every week
Buy your subscription to GTN Bestsellers
All the latest news from the world of garden centre catering
Bridport centre's curvaceous £1m restaurant takes shape
Send us your news and great ideas

Contact us with your news. 

Email neil.pope@tgcmc.co.uk, or trevor.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk or call the GTN News team on 01733 775700


When will the For Sale sign go up at Wyevale GCs?

 

Woof! Newshound here…back and straining at the leash. So what’s cooking? The boss says people who’ve have had their ears to the walls at Wyevale GCs HQ reckon there’s something interesting about to break.

 

Well, I know and you know there’s always something interesting going on down there but given that the walls at Fortress Wyevale are notoriously sound-proof, news doesn’t often leak out, does it…yet, what if there’s a mole…?

 

Anyway, let’s rewind for a mo. It’s more than five years now since Terra Firma bought the 126-centre Wyevale chain for £276m. At the time, the group (then trading as The Garden Centre Group) was being run by Nicholas Marshall. Six months later, Marshall resigned after four years as chief executive. He will have got to know Terra Firma’s chairman, Guy Hands, during the run-up to the acquisition.

 

Fast forward to 2016: Terra Firma joins the bidding as Tesco puts the rival 34-store Dobbies chain up for auction…but loses out to Midlothian Capital Partners/Hattington Capital. Had it been successful, Wyevale would have had enough critical mass to excite the wider investment market, possibly even with a flotation.

 

Eight months later, Dobbies recruits Marshall as chief executive. Within weeks, Marshall brings a string of trusted former Wyevale colleagues who had been ousted in Terra Firma’s purge into the Dobbies fold in key positions. So the team that knew the Wyevale group inside out is now running Dobbies. Interesting, no? Some of them will have friends who still work on the inside at Wyevale…

 

Meanwhile, Wyevale Garden Centres is having a torrid time, forced to negotiate £100m of re-financing following losses of £122m reported in its 2016 accounts.

 

From now on, we are told, Wyevale Garden Centres, under its new-look leadership team headed by Roger Mclaughlan, will adopt a new strategy…dedicating more time to serving and advising customers. Like successful independents do, then? “We need to make the company more customer focused than it has historically been,” Mclaughlan is reported as having said.

 

So these are surely clear signals that a re-structured, re-focused and re-financed WGC is being groomed for the market – and it’s fair to assume that Terra Firma will not want to wait too long to get the business off its Hands once the financials improve.

 

Hence the ears to the walls at WGC HQ as we wait for the For Sale sign to go up.

 

Dobbies’ backers will be aware of this. Could they be tempted to make a move on WGC, a business of which Marshall and his team have a uniquely intimate knowledge?

 

It would create a group with full national reach from Cornwall to Invernesshire, capitalisation to attract further investment – and a management that currently appears committed to retaining plants and gardening as its primary raison d’etre.

 

At the age of 67, Nicholas Marshall could well be up for one more special ‘David and Goliath’ challenge.

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Del.icio.us Digg | Comment (0)
Comment
Name:*

Email Address:*

Comment:*


Related Articles