Houseplants are Great Sellers at Christmas Pictures from The Greatest Christmas Houseplant Teams
Sales of houseplants and related products certainly gave garden centres a boost in the run up to Christmas. And there’s no reason why this trend can’t continue well into 2013 if we make the most of upcoming gift sales opportunities: Valentines Day, Mothers Day and then Easter.
With drip feeders for orchids and pointsettias as well as cover pots continuing to dominate the GTN Bestsellers Garden Products chart, we believe there are still some good sales to be gained, even if a centre doesn't have a full time housplant department or area.
We also think that there are plenty of link sales to be achieved with promotions on lighting. To emphasise the point The Greatest Christmas Awards comperes Trevor Pfeiffer and Ken Crafer wore LED string lights during the party night at the Majestic Hotel, Harrogate. How will you get your staff to promote add on linked sales for houseplants?
This week we put the spotlight on those garden centres that excelled in The Greatest Christmas Houseplant Team Awards. Snowdonia (small centre), Bents (large centre) and Melbicks Garden & Leisure (group centre) all won gold awards for their entries.
At Snowdonia the judges were impressed with the family running the business as a team, with great community involvement. They also felt the home grown poinsettias looked excellent and were a real USP. The Snowdonia team are seen pictured above receiving their award from John Atwell, of sponsors Premier Decorations.
The team at Bents were very keen and knowledgeable, cheerful, full of advice and were helpful. The centre had very good seasonal display ideas and plant quality (see picture at the top of the page).
The Melbicks team (above) were also very keen and knowledgeable, cheerful, full of advice and helpful. The store had good seasonal display ideas.
With the judges selecting 19 finalists, and having a tough job separating the winners, it’s good to see this once maligned part of our business perform so well. See the Image gallery below for photos from all our Gold, Sliver and Special Award Winning Christmas Houseplant Teams: Bents, Melbicks, Snowdonia, Scotsdales, Fresh @ Burcot and Poplars.
The Greatest Christmas Awards are proof that results are proportional to effort across all sizes of garden centres.
Next week: We put the spotlight on The Greatest Christmas Sizzle winners.
