Ouch! It feels as though we have fallen off a cliff since the end of June. July and August so far have brought us seven consecutive weeks of GTN Bestsellers All Sales Indexes that are down on last year. That means we now have an almost 3% volume sales gap to make up through the autumn and into Christmas. That’s not out of order, but we do need things to be less extreme, please!
As Martin Stewart told GTN Xtra this week, “we are an industry that works best without extremes.” Having coped with what’s been thrown at us this year, including the fire at Gardman, we really should be patting ourselves on the back. I doubt if any other part of retail can report trading performances near to those of UK Garden Centres.
We can now look forward to Glee where indications are that there will be more new products on show than last year with some interesting developments for garden décor and environmentally friendly gardening. You can find out more in the September, Glee Preview issue of GTN and in the Glee Daily news which we will be bringing you every week now until the show and live from each day at the NEC. See you there!
GTN Bestsellers Top 50 sales volumes compared to the same week last year: week 33
- Garden Products Top 50 – down 34%
- Growing Media Top 50 – down 8%
- Veg 2 Gro Top 50 – down 26%
- Wild Bird Care Products Top 50 – down 21%
- All Plants index – static 0%
- All Items index – down 10%
