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GTN Bestsellers - garden centre sales data every week
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Would you like some help to sell more of bestselling products?
Trevor Pfeiffer, GTN's Bestsellers Analyst can help your business sell more of bestselling gardening products, guaranteed...
Dear GTN Xtra reader,
Did you know that we can supply you with the most up to date garden centre sales information every week together with a commentary on new trends and opportunities, plus the unique GTN Bestsellers Tip of the Week.
If you invest £120.00 in a subscription to GTN Bestsellers you’ll get the full GTN Bestsellers Top 50 charts delivered in print and on-line every week for the next year. As well as the Bestsellers charts for Garden Products, Veg 2 Gro, Growing Media and Christmas (from October to December), the GTN Team uses 5 years worth of garden centre Epos data history to give you a guaranteed sales increasing Bestsellers Tip each week. The GTN Bestsellers Tips of the Week are based on current sales patterns and new trends as well as past performance and are timed to give your staff the best chance of seriously increasing your return on investment. GTN Bestsellers Newsletter, 3rd May 2013
Take a look at the GTN Bestsellers newsletter from May 3rd as an example. To get your own copy each week all you need to do is reply to this e-mail newsletter or call me on 07973 504214. I really hope you take up this offer of help to increase your sales of Bestselling products. GTN Bestsellers is already helping hundreds of retailers, big and small, increase their sales. Now you can be too! Looking forward to hearing back from you Kindest regards Trevor Trevor Pfeiffer
Managing Director and Bestsellers Analyst
The Garden Communication & Media Company Ltd
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TV Gardener David Domoney’s search for Britain’s Best Street
 Cultivation Street launched at the weekend to find Britain’s best turned out street. And FREE POS is available for Garden Centres to join in...
Cultivation Street launched last weekend in The Sunday People to find Britain’s best turned out street. Whether your customers live on a terrace in Todmorden, or avenue in Abergavenny – TV gardener David Domoney wants to see their street and judge who has the best gardens, plants and green spaces in the whole of the UK. The competition started on Sunday May 26 and there is prize money of £10,000 National Garden Gift Vouchers to the winning street. Applications for the prize should be in by Monday August 26, and the final prize will be announced on the Monday September 8. There are major media outlets already confirmed – Sunday People are giving extensive coverage as are many regional newspapers. David Domoney, the organiser of the campaign, says: “This is the Chelsea Flower Show of the UK’s streets, communities of next door neigbours all working together to share the passion of gardening and create a sense of pride to where they live. It’s the ideal place to share experience, plants and the enjoyment of gardening.
"We have achieved such widespread support for this competition. I am also delighted that the Prince of Wales, Princes Foundation for Building Community is awarding the Sustainability and Community Street category."
 The sponsor is the Horticultural Trades Association with their brand ‘National Garden Gift Vouchers’. The prize money for the winners is not to be sniffed at with a standing total of £16,000 pounds worth of National Garden Gift vouchers up for grabs. Carol Paris Director General of the Horticultural Trades Association says “Having a great line of street gardens does not only benefit the home owners, it could inspire hundreds of people who pass that street in their daily lives, equaling in a push to encourage new gardeners by good example”. Prince's Foundation competition judge says: "We believe that green spaces form an integral part of any healthy, sustainable community and this competition will help put the spotlight on that. Making the most of your front garden can help transform a good street into a great community that everyone can enjoy. Competitions like this show us that you can make the most of any urban garden, no matter how small, as long as you're creative and committed." The Horticultural Trades Association is supplying all Garden Centres nationwide with free POS kits ready for the launch to help to entice as many entries for Cultivation Street as possible. If each house that enters spends on average £150 on garden improvements, then one street's houses is worth a minimum of £600 to a retailer, with five streets' worth a minimum of £3,000 (based upon 4 houses in a street). The Sunday People newspaper is behind the campaign with coverage of the competition, with the Editor James Scott saying “Encouraging gardeners young and old is a big belief to our paper, I dedicate a whole page every week for David Domoney to give great hints and tips on how to make the most of our readers outside space”. The People will be printing features on the competition throughout the summer. As well as the HTA and Trinity Mirror, the campaign has gained some other heavy weights supporting the campaign including the Institute of Horticulture, The Garden Centre Association, and the Gardening Industry Manufactures Association. Neil Gow, Director of GIMA said: “With the season late to kick off, this competition is perfectly timed to inspire the public to venture outside and garden, alongside manufacturers and retailers working together to encourage sales”. Participating streets include families from across the age spectrum, involving children right through to the elderly. It’s all about creating beautiful garden spaces, making new friends, attracting more wildlife and, having fun. With regional heats and categories of awards, we are looking for true community spirit and pride, by making aesthetic and environmental improvements to street gardens culminating in ‘Britain’s Best Street Award’. In addition to eight regional awards there are other special award categories which include:- Generation Street – Awarded to the street from across the whole of Britain that has encouraged the youngest people to get involved in the project. Inspiration Street – Awarded to the street that has come together to look spectacular against the odds. It might be that the gardeners are recovering from illness, accident or addiction, but the community has still pulled together to create something very special. Judges will be looking for an inspirational story. Multiplication Street – This award will go to the street with the most consecutive front gardens involved in the competition, so start encouraging your neighbours to take part today. The more the merrier! Transformation Street – This award will go to the street that has enjoyed the most impressive transformation across the whole of the UK. Whether its seen driveways returned to gardens, dramatic new planting, and the greatest improvement in front gardens or all of the above.
Sustainability & Community Street – This award will be judged and awarded by the Princes Foundation for Building Community for the street that has demonstrated an understanding of harmony and sustainability. Use of sustainable planting, re use or second life of discarded products/waste, timeless land based skills, willow hurdles, eco growing, dry stone walling, building your own bug hotels whilst involving community groups. Cultivation School – This award will go to the school that has involved children or families from the school to create an impressive garden within the grounds of the school. Whether it is with bountiful edible plants that help transform attitudes towards cabbage, soil, worms and ladybirds or beautiful flowers for decoration and harmony.
To enter and for more details, visit www.cultivationstreet.co.uk There is a full range of Cultivation Street POS available for HTA members. Please email nggv@the-hta.org.uk for more details.
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Food & Catering Zone given more prominence at Glee
With catering and food sales continuing to offer major add-on profit opportunities for garden centres, Glee will be offering retailers extensive inspiration at a more prominent Food & Catering Zone this year, supported by sponsors Vision Commercial Kitchens...
With catering and food sales continuing to offer major add-on profit opportunities for garden centres, Glee will be offering retailers extensive inspiration at a more prominent Food & Catering Zone this year, supported by sponsors Vision Commercial Kitchens.
The Glee Food & Catering Zone, now in its second year, is designed to give garden retailers an unrivalled opportunity to gather best practice examples, advice, contacts and products to help them initiate or improve their catering offering.
As well as a wide range of exhibitors offering food and drink products, equipment and related services, retailers will find three dedicated areas of catering inspiration to explore.
One area will comprise a walk-through Case Study gallery showcasing catering excellence across a range of sectors, from food courts and hotel chains to farm shops and pasta bars.
The gallery will also pinpoint the trends and tastes that matter to today’s shoppers, for garden retailers toapply to their own locations.
A second area will offer hands-on Workshop sessions each day, enabling visitors to pick the brains of experts in areas such as menu selection, catering equipment, staffing and consumertrends.
A third section will bring together a selection of innovative, on-trend Product Ideas to help garden retailers enhance their catering presentation techniques, tableware and more.
Would-be caterers will also be able to watch live ‘cook-off’ demonstrations, using Rational Combi Ovens to show the impressive speed and quality that can be achieved in commercial cooking – from breakfasts through to evening meals.
Vision Commercial Kitchens’ managing director Jack Sharkey, who is also Chairman of the Catering Equipment Distributors Association (CEDA), explains: “Glee’s aim, like ours, is to arm garden retailers with every tool and technique they need to meet the growing demand for on-site food and refreshments.
 "Our galleries, workshops and cooking demonstrations will offer a chance to learn from best practice in a range of sectors, to meet the experts and to explore the latest trends. It’s a chance not to be missed for any garden centre wanting to build their catering profits.”
Glee Event Manager Matthew Mein added: “We are delighted to welcome Vision Commercial Kitchens back on board as sponsor of our Food & Catering Zone, as well as all the exhibitors in this field.
"Catering plays a significant and growing role in garden retailing these days, and we invite everyone looking to enhance their food offering to make the most of the unprecedented expertise, contacts and ideas that will be brought together at Glee.”
To find out about the Glee Food & Catering Zone, or how to exhibit, visit www.gleebirmingham.com, or call the Glee team on 0203 033 2197. Glee takes place at the NEC on September 15-17.
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lunch! – Europe’s premier trade event for the food-to-go market – has once again been shortlisted for a pair of prestigious industry awards by the UK’s Association of Event Organisers (AEO).
The recently announced nominations see lunch! up for its fourth consecutive Best Trade Show Exhibition (under 2,000sqm) Award – an accolade that the event first won at the AEO’s Excellence Awards in 2010 (followed by a second triumph in 2011). The lunch! team will also be defending its Best Marketing Campaign of the Year Award, which it won last year.
Diversified Business Communications UK, the organiser of lunch!, had much to celebrate last week, having received a total of four nominations in the exhibition industry’s annual equivalent to the Oscars; with its office show and new launch Natural Products Scandinavia also recognised.
The news came just days after visitor registration opened for lunch!’s sixth edition, which will feature over 270 exhibitors (up 15% from 236) when it returns to the Business Design Centre in Islington, London, on 26-27 September.
Renowned for attracting top buyers from across the food-to-go retailing and contract catering industry, lunch! has enjoyed growing industry prominence and support since it launched in 2008 with around 100 exhibitors.
lunch!’s meteoric rise to the forefront of the UK’s food and drink trade show calendar has seen attendance surge from 2,197 to 4,403 (that’s up over 100% in just five years).
Indeed 2012 was a momentous year for lunch! all round – which marked its switch to a bigger venue by increasing its exhibitors by 42% and selling out four months early in the process. 2012 also witnessed increased interest from international buyers (up 32%, on top of a 76% increase the previous year) drawn to London on the promise of seeing a wealth of new launches from the food-to-go sector’s most cutting-edge food, drink, packaging, equipment and technology suppliers.
Speaking on behalf of the lunch! team, group event manager Chris Brazier says: “From day one we wanted lunch! tobe different, to really stand out from the event crowd, and to be a real buying experience that visitors – from the biggest multiples to the local cafes and coffee shops – all actually enjoyed coming to.
"Five shows and three industry awards later and the word that still appears more often than any other in testimonials about lunch! is 'innovation'. That’s what great about the show – it’s the ethos that drives it forward – and we’re absolutely delighted that the AEO has recognised this once more.
"It’s an exceptionally rare honour – and an enormous achievement for everyone here at Diversified UK – to be nominated for best trade show and best marketing campaign for two years running – and it wouldn’t be possible without the continued support of all our exhibitors, visitors, sponsors and partners.”
This continuing support has already heralded the prospective announcement of a sold out show months away from opening day, with booked stand space for 2013 now already outstripping the total sales for last year’s show.
The expansion into a whole new area at the three-floor venue (which is now home to the popular Innovation Zone, the Innovation Challenge Showcase, the Working lunch! Theatre, British Smoothie Championships, Press Office, and a new VIP lounge) has done little to slow demand, with just a handful of stands left on the upper level (plus one stand on the ground level).
Confirmed exhibitors to date include big name brands such as Equip Line; Impress Sandwiches; Delice de France; Cafe Deli Wholesale; Odysea; Tayto; Bagel Nash; ABDA; Tudor Tea & Coffee; The Food Doctor; Magrini; Wrigley UK; Simple Simon Foods; Delifrance UK; Freshfayre Chilled Foodservice; First Pack; Crown Foods; and Warbutons.
The AEO Excellence Awards recognises achievements by organisers, venues, suppliers and contractors throughout the exhibitions industry. This year’s winners are to be announced at a dedicated awards ceremony, which is taking place at – lunch!’s original venue – Old Billingsgate, London, on 21 June 2013.
lunch! returns to the Business Design Centre in Islington, London, on 26-27 September 2013. For further information and to register for a free trade pass, please visit www.lunchshow.co.uk and use priority code LUNPR2 where prompted.
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Top 10 most read GTN Xtra stories of the last month
| 1. | €12m turnover for new garden centre with no outside planteria | | | 2. | Waitrose Garden Centre - picture exclusive | | | 3. | Ex-Waitrose executive in charge of the UK's biggest gardening club | | | 4. | Work starts on £2 million garden centre | | | 5. | Fire blazes through garden centre | | | 6. | New products are a hit as sales double | | | 7. | South Cumbria garden centre boss faces court trial | | | 8. | Book-keeper denies £55k garden centre theft | | | 9. | There's light at the end of the tunnel | | | 10. | Greenbrook Garden Centre features on peak-time BBC News) |
If you missed any of these stories in GTN Xtra e-mail newsletters over the past month, just click on the links below.
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Launch of The Greatest Awards 2013
New award celebrates 100 years of the Chelsea Flower Show
In the RHS Chelsea Flower Show's Centenary Year, the search is on for garden centre planteria teams with a touch of gold...
With poor weather in successive seasons underlining more strongly than ever the need for creative input to boost plant sales, GTN announces a brand new award to find the garden centre planterias with the Midas touch.
Since their launch by GTN in 2006, The Greatest Awards have been recognising and rewarding team excellence in garden centre retailing across all the major departments.
This year, recognising that garden centres must maintain a tight focus on essential business targets to mitigate recent losses, The Greatest Awards will initially feature the planteria, the category that gives garden centres their unique competitive edge.
After another poor spring for plant sales, centres are anxious to maximise planteria turnover in June and July, way beyond the traditional cut-off point for the summer bedding season. This summer, there is a heaven-sent theme to inspire planteria managers and their merchandising teams – 2013 is the centenary year of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, whose medal-winning plants and show gardens will continue to excite the gardening public throughout the rest of the year.
GTN and sponsors Bord na Mona are now inviting garden centres to take part in The Greatest Planterias Award 2013, a nationwide competition to encourage the creation of exciting and innovative plant displays that will stimulate footfall and boost customer spend.
The competition is in two parts:
1. The Greatest Planteria Displays celebrating 100 years of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show – using all your skills and ingenuity to produce beautiful, fun-filled planteria theatre - with sales appeal. As last year’s Greatest Jubilee Doorstep promotions proved, displays of this kind guarantee an immediate increase in plant sales.
Garden centres should send photos of their displays to us by Wednesday 15 July 2013. The winners will be selected by an expert Greatest Awards judging panel and notified of their success later in July, giving them ample opportunity for marketing and PR activity during the summer and through the autumn sales period.
2. The Greatest Planteria Sales Teams - as voted by the public. GTN will provide, on application, PDFs of posters, voting forms and other POS you can use to get your customers involved in voting your Planteria team as The Greatest. Part of the voting process involves your customers giving feedback as to why your team is The Greatest, which always proves a great motivator to planteria staff.
The public vote for The Greatest Planteria Sales Team will also close on 15 July and the winners notified later in the month.
For both of these Greatest Awards categories there will be awards for different sizes of garden centre, so every Planteria Sales team has a chance of winning, they just have to be Great at what they do. To register your Planteria Team for The Greatest Planetria Awards follow this link: Register here
Garden centres who took part in The Greatest Jubilee Doorstep Challenge know just how much their special displays helped to increase plant sales in the challenging trading conditions of summer 2012.
At our Gold Award centre, Van Hage at Great Amwell, their excellent Jubilee dressing was evident from the car park through to the spa baths display and resulted in sales of Jubilee items that far exceeded expectations.
Centres can use their participation to develop useful community networking and even create their own customer competition, like finalists Barton Grange at Brock, who got 42 local schools involved last year.
At Busy Bee in the Isle of Wight, in the section to find the customer with The Greatest Jubilee Doorstep Display, Linda Ryan of Sandown created a bright, vibrant jubilee doorstep that also included the Olympics – a great way to welcome visitors and brighten up her street.
Even the smallest centres enjoyed success last year. Our Silver Award went to the bijou Cleeve Nursery. Other finalists included Cowells, Coolings, and Van Hage Peterborough.
Here's a collection of pictures from last year's The Greatest Awards
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To enter your team into The Greatest Planteria Awards, email thegreatestawards@tgcmc.co.uk , typing 'Greatest Planteria Awards' in the subject line, to register your FREE entry. You will then receive further details, POS materials and your public voting pack by email.
As well as receiving The Greatest Awards accolades and certficates, as so proudly displayed in previous Greatest Award winning centres, the Gold winners of The Greatest Planteria Team awards 2013 will win tickets to The Greatest Awards Party, held in Harrogate in January 2014. It's an event not to be missed.
Deadline for submitting display photos and public votes: Wednesday, July 15.
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The latest GfK stats indicate that it is going to be another bumper year for leading weedkiller brand Roundup.
Figures show that of the Top 10 weedkiller products sold in the UK, eight are branded Roundup, with Roundup Gel taking the top slot.
Since its launch in 2011 sales of Roundup Gel have gone from strength to strength and it is now official - Roundup Gel is the number one weedkiller pack in the UK, with the highest rate of sales per store*.
This increase in sales from Roundup Gel has undoubtedly attributed to Roundup's growth in market share which now rests at almost 41%**, an increase of almost 10 points on this time last year.
Based on these figures the message to retailers wanting to benefit from this surge in demand is clear - Increase sales by giving the weedkiller brand the promotional space it deserves.
GTN Bestseller data backs up the findings with Roundup Gel being the top selling garden product this week.
For further information call 0870 530 1010 or visit www.roundup-garden.com
Source:
*GfK Weedkiller Panelmarket sales value Hit List April 2013 YTD
** GfK Weedkiller Panelmarket Sales Value April 2013 YTD
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Last chance to enter ‘Westland Challenge’ worth £6,000
Garden centres that took part in Garden Re-Leaf Day in March need to act now to stand a chance of winning the Westland Challenge competition – which offers retailers the chance win Westland Gro-Sure All-Purpose Compost worth £6,000...
Garden centres that took part in Garden Re-Leaf Day in March need to act now to stand a chance of winning the Westland Challenge competition – which offers retailers the chance win Westland Gro-Sure All-Purpose Compost worth £6,000. The closing date for entries is Friday, March 31.Westland Horticulture is awarding the major prize to the garden centre that is judged to have run the most effective, all-round Garden Re-Leaf Day campaign in March. To enter, garden centres need to complete a Westland Challenge entry form – available from Westland Horticulture – summarising their event, publicity campaigns, footfall and sales indicators, and return it to Westland by the closing date.The winning garden centre, who will be notified by 28th June, will receive a delivery of 50 litre bags of Gro-Sure All Purpose Compost for retail or other use, courtesy of Westland Horticulture. The new compost, which is enriched with Gro-Sure Plant Food, is ideal for growing flowers, fruits or vegetables. Keith Nicholson, Marketing Director of Westland Horticulture, said: “At Westland we are delighted to see just how many people up-and-down the country played an active role in this year’s Garden Re-Leaf Day. We have launched the Westland Challenge to reinforce our support for the annual event. We would like to encourage as many retailers as possible to make sure they share their entries with us by post or email no later than May 31st." Hundreds of garden centres and suppliers took part in the second annual Garden Re-Leaf Day in March. The national initiative was established in 2012 to launch the spring gardening retail season whilst raising money for a designated charity. As well as centrally coordinated events such as the Garden Re-Leaf Day Celebrity Gardening Quiz and the HTA’s National gardening Gift Voucher-linked ‘Find the Winning Plot’ competition, retailers organised many hundreds of their own local activities around the UK. This year the Westland Challenge entries will be judged by Keith Nicholson, Marketing Director at Westland Horticulture, Boyd Douglas-Davies, founder of Garden Re-Leaf and CEO of Hillview Garden Centres, Sue Allen, Garden Re-Leaf committee member and former Managing Director of Millbrook Garden Company, and Michelle Whitefoot, Garden Re-Leaf committee member and Managing Director of Whitefoot-Forward PR. Garden Re-Leaf Day’s designated charity for 2013 is Greenfingers, a charity dedicated to improving the lives of children in hospices through the creation of magical gardens for children’s hospices around the UK. In 2012 Garden Re-Leaf Day raised more than £55,000 for the charity; enabling two, specially designed, family gardens to be built at hospices in Stoke-on-Trent and West Dunbartonshire. To request an entry form for the Garden Re-Leaf Day Westland Challenge, email Dympna Carron, dcarron@westlandhorticulture.com, listing the subject as ‘Garden Re-Leaf Westland Challenge’.
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The HTA National Plant Show boasts an inspirational programme of seminars this year, and will be opened by best-selling author James Wong.
Three plant-focused seminars will run over the course of the show: Tuesday 25 June will see the first seminar at 10am and the second at 3pm, and the final seminar will take place at 10am on Wednesday 26 June.
The fantastic line up of speakers kicks off with a seminar from James Wong the Kew-trained botanist, BBC science presenter and obsessive foodie grower, sponsored by Suttons. Visitors will hear James’ unique take on the future for Grow Your Own. He’ll offer ideas for retailers to inspire a new wave of excitement in this product area that has generated so much interest over recent years. Using his own hands-on experience in growing a wide range of unusual plants, James could have the key to tapping into the next generation. His enthusiasm is infectious and a lively and stimulating seminar is assured.
The second seminar will be given by Michael Marriott, Technical Manager at David Austin Roses. Working for nearly 30 years with what is probably the best-known brand in plants, Michael will share his vision on how to capture the imagination of customers, how to build and promote a brand, how to sell a dream - not just a plant – and how to grow sales in the plantarea. “It all comes from knowing what your customers want and giving it to them!” Sounds simple but Michael will explain how to actually make it happen.
In the third and final seminar Adam Pasco, the former editor of BBC Gardener’s World magazine, now running his own media and consultancy company, will present his views on what the public will be looking for from their gardens and garden centres in the year ahead. Adam will review the trends we’ve seen over recent years and where he sees these going for 2014 and beyond. What do garden centres need to do to get customers buying more plants? What role can the media play and how best can retailers reach out to people still to buy plants and see their garden reach its potential? These are all questions that Adam will tackle, leaving his audience with plenty of inspirational ideas for their own business.
Visit the Seminar Area, sponsored by Barclaycard, to be inspired and motivated by these fantastic speakers. Register now to attend the show at www.nationalplantshow.co.uk. Seminar places are limited and so make sure you get there early so you don’t miss out.
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Put on a Chelsea Planteria Display now!
With all the media coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show this week, make sure you have a plant sales display that links into Chelsea, like this Gold-medal winning one from Homebase...
With all the media coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show this week, make sure you have a plant sales display that links into Chelsea, like this Gold-medal winning one from Homebase.
The display will sell more plants for you as was proved with last year’s Jubillee Doorstep Challenge and you’ll be in with a chance of winning The Greatest Planteria Display Award for 2013. Send an email to
thegreatestawards@tgcmc.co.uk, typing 'Greatest Planteria Awards' in the subject line, to register your FREE entry.
Homebase won Gold at Chelsea this week and on Tuesday morning had POS out on display in every garden centre informing their customers. Well done Homebase!
Bestsellers Tip of the Week...
HTA plea over pesticide survey
The HTA is encouraging its retailers to make their customers aware of a survey regarding amateur use of garden, allotment and houseplant pesticides...
The HTA is encouraging its retailers to make their customers aware of a survey regarding amateur use of garden, allotment and houseplant pesticides.
The Amateur User Habits Survey 2013 is being carried out by Resource Futures on behalf of the Chemicals Regulation Directorate, the regulatory body for pesticides.
The findings of the research will be used to develop future guidance on the safe use, storage and disposal of pesticides for amateur gardeners.
The survey is live until 14 June. It will only take 5 to 8 minutes to complete, and the HTA has donated National Garden Gift Vouchers for the prize draw which participants can enter at the end of the survey (first prize is £100, plus five runner-up prizes of £25).
The survey can be accessed by clicking here
HTA Policy Manager, Gary Scroby comments, “This survey is important in terms of gathering data to help shape future guidance on pesticide use by the amateur gardener. Resource Futures will be conducting in-store surveys in a small number of garden centres, but the on-line version provides an opportunity to capture much more data.
"We are therefore encouraging HTA retailers to advertise the survey to their customers via their websites and electronic newsletters over the next couple of weeks.”
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