Gardens looking too good...are customers waiting for Christmas?
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Are our customers running out of energy for gardening and garden centre shopping or just resting before the Christmas bonanza?
It’s mid-September and usually by now general product sales are rising as Autumn gardening gets going but that does not appear to be happening this year – at least not according to volume sales data supplied for GTN Bestsellers. For the first time this year all of our GTN Bestsellers chart indexes are down year on year, and also down week on week.
Is it just because gardens are still looking so good after an excellent year for everything that grows? Have you all sold so many ‘looking good’ plants that are still performing, which means our customers just don’t want to switch into planting bulbs and pansies?
Even solar light sales are down year on year this week.
 High sales volumes of pots, top soil, manure and onion sets indicate that the really keen gardeners are getting on with their gardening. What we need is for the majority to get growing in the garden as soon as possible.
Perhaps the opening of Christmas displays over the coming weeks will help kick gardening sales back into action, as well as get the Christmas cash rolling into the tills.
When is your Christmas display opening? Near to the GTN office, Baytree Garden Centre opened their displays last weekend and the grand opening at Van Hage Peterborough was yesterday (Friday).
Let us know when your Christmas opens, send us some photos and at the same time register your interest to be included in the judging for The Greatest Christmas Awards 2015. E-mail trevor.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk. See the gallery below for pictures of Christmas at Whitehall Whitchurch that opened on September 12th where centre manager David Manning reports "Sales are on a par with last year so far with customers definitely in one of two camps, ones who don’t want to even acknowledge Christmas and those who think it's wonderful and are purchasing already."
GTN Bestsellers Top 50 sales volumes compared to the same week last year...
- Garden Products - down 9%
- Veg-2-Gro Products - down 1%
- Growing Media - down 21%
- All Items Index - down 8%
Look out for the GTN Bestsellers Christmas Chart in October. To subscribe to GTN Bestsellers email karen.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk
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