In This Issue
How are suppliers faring during lockdown - Westland, Smart, Evergreen Garden Care and others are getting ready for re-opening of garden centres
Behind the scenes at Baytree Click & Collect
Garden Leisure suppliers living in an on-line world but anticipating garden centres re-opening
Greenfingers Charity’s #floralfriday continues to bring a little floral cheer to the nation
Analogue survival for garden centres in a digital world
Dobbies launches Little Seedlings at home
Use of Black Plastic in UK Packaging Continues to Drop
Gardenex recruits exhibitors for spoga+gafa as Government confirms grants of £1,500 for eligible SMEs
Woodlodge’s Richard Newton raises a staggering £7686 for Greenfingers Charity
GIMA urging retailers to keep cash flow active during lockdown
Thank you for reading GTNXtra in such high numbers
Clipglove comes out top in Good Housekeeping glove test!
Grow some sunshine with Gardena and Lynne Lambourne
Zest direct to relaunch “garden product home delivery service” to support online retailers
How LifestyleGarden® can help to beat isolation blues in the garden this summer while playing a role in preserving the planet
EGO announces powerful new line-up for 2020
Get your own copy of GTN Xtra
Garden product supplier provides plastic for NHS visors
Recoup include film recyclability guidance in plastic packaging design publication
Hillier Trees prepare for a positive post covid-19 future
Garden Radio charges on hold
The best of last week's
After the quietest Easter ever, how are you and your team?
"I just don't get how gardening is deemed non-essential then certain supermarkets put big banners with get ready for spring," more post Easter feedback
GrowNation could be a good answer to organisation challenges of garden centre delivery systems
Derek Spicer, Kilworth Conifers dies
John Grayson joins Hozelock
GTN Xtra - Send to all
Garden Centre Photo Tours
Haskins Snowhill re-opens after £15m re-vamp
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Email trevor.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk or call the GTN News team on 01733 775700


GrowNation could be a good answer to organisation challenges of garden centre delivery systems

Following the launch of GrowNation, the free E-Commerce web site for garden centres, GTN Xtra has been asking Steve Meleka to give more information about the site and the reasons behind the initiative.

 

"It’s been brilliant to see garden centres coming up with their own local delivery services, but what we're hearing is that they're coming up against very similar sets of challenges over and over. The demand is absolutely massive from consumers at the moment, but efficiency and organisation are needed to take advantage of it whilst keeping costs down.

 

"Centres who are relying on Facebook, email, manual card payments, spreadsheets and the like are finding it really inefficient and overwhelming for their staff. It’s also creating customer service problems which is putting people off. We’re seeing lots of centres having to either keep pausing their service due to overwhelming demand or sadly, just throwing up their hands and giving up.

 

"We realised weeks ago that an easy to set up online platform was the answer, so we got to work straight away. We’ve been talking with some the most innovative growers and wholesalers already who are helping us by pre-populating product information for their lines. This means garden centres can very easily choose which products from which suppliers they want to list on their own storefronts. The process we’ve designed is really quick and easy to do, even for people who’ve never had an online store before.

 

"In most cases there will already be product names, descriptions, photos and suggested retail prices in place, but these can all be adjusted by the retailer in any way they like. Nat from Porters Fuchsias has been brilliant, supporting us by giving us data to work with and getting our name out to other growers who can benefit from our project.

 

"Wholesalers don’t need to change the way they operate, in fact we expect all the existing relationships to remain the same. The benefit for retailers is that they’re effectively taking back-orders and payment straight away, then ordering from wholesalers in the usual way.

 

"A slightly different example would be Fallen Fruits, their entire drop-ship range is being added at the moment, so retailers can sign up, list their products and sell them right away. There’s nothing else for them to do other than take the customers money, Fallen Fruits deliver orders direct to the garden centres’ customers.

 

"The priority for us is to make it as quick and easy as possible for garden centres to start taking advantage of online sales, so we've launched with a no-risk option. We charge a flat commission on sales, so we only benefit if the store owner does. We also organise and process all the payments, then pay garden centres direct. We’re currently negotiating with payment platform providers to get the best possible card processing rate on behalf of retailers as a group, which is something they wouldn’t be able to do individually.

 

"We’re not expecting to see any significant change to the current lockdown restrictions for a while yet, and even when that happens, it’s unlikely it will be possible to drive the same levels of footfall and business through garden centres. We think we can help there too, so we’ve already built a click & collect option into the platform that we’ll give centres access to when the government tell us it’s safe. We think that even if centres are allowed to open, some customers would rather still buy this way, especially if they’re in one of the vulnerable groups.

 

"Click and collect has been growing even faster than on-line direct delivery over the last few years. It’s hugely more efficient than local deliveries which restrict you to a relatively small number of orders per hour. We’re working with commercial and local authority environmental health specialists to design safe collection protocols which are supported by features in our software.

 

"Click and collect could be a really useful halfway house between what we can do now and centres being allowed to re- open. We expect centres to be able to fulfil around 30 collections per hour per collection point with minimal staff. If the demand is higher, the platform supports an unlimited number of additional collection points or bays.

 

"We can offer garden centres the ability to start selling right away. If they’ve got products to list now they just need to get them over to us and we’ll get them set up. We also need to engage with as many wholesale partners as possible to really turbocharge the project. When centres can immediately start listing all of their existing suppliers’ products, they’ll be able to begin generating cash and paying their bills again, which can’t come soon enough for everyone’s sake.

 

"We don’t want to disrupt any existing supplier/garden centre relationships, garden centres will continue to order and pay suppliers as before. What we’re doing is allowing centres to sell online quickly by listing the products, processing payment and providing a set of tools for managing orders and local deliveries.

 

Read more and follow the links to register for GrowNation using this link

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