After visiting 130 garden centres this Christmas season for The Greatest Christmas Awards, the judges decided to do something different to help raise money for Make-A-Wish. Each of them offered a day’s consultancy to a garden centre or supplier in return for a sizeable donation to Make-A-Wish.
A total of nearly £4,000 has already been donated. The consultancy days were offered in a Silent Auction at The Greatest Christmas Awards party at the Majestic Hotel, Harrogate, on Sunday evening. More money was raised for Make-A-Wish in a raffle on the night to bring the total to over £6,200.
The winners were the highest bids for each consultancy day.
Extra consultancy days available for anyone interested in donating £500 or more, Contact Trevor Pfeiffer by email trevor.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk
The consultancy days:
Justin Avery: The Art of Christmas Marketing for Garden Centres. Having been Marketing Manager of The Greatest Awards multiple winning Endsleigh Garden Centre, Justin offers advice, ideas and action plans to make sure your Christmas marketing plans have the right objectives and maximise returns.
Ken Crafer: Magic Makers – Taking Christmas to the next level. This unique course from the Garden Centre Academy has been carefully designed to enable you and your Christmas Team to review your offer in 2014 and to consider practical and achievable ways to make 2015 more magical and profitable.
Roger Crookes: Roger now helps garden centre teams raise their retail standards as one of the GCA inspectors, and works with teams across all departments – he is particularly keen to help centres develop inspiring plant and bulb departments, Christmas departments, and Santa’s Grottos.
Steve Myatt: Business Development Mentor and Growth Coach. Steve covers analysis of the business, thoughts for further development and market opportunities, be it retail or supplier.
Trevor Pfeiffer: Publisher and GTN Bestsellers Analyst. Trevor offers teams an insight into the ideas that drive volume sales and ways to make the most of the Christmas peak.
Doug Stewart: Magic Makers – Taking Christmas to the next level. This unique course from the Garden Centre Academy has been carefully designed to enable you and your Christmas Team to review your offer in 2014 and to consider practical and achievable ways to make 2015 more magical and profitable.
Pictured: The Greatest Christmas Awards judges (from left to right): Neil Pope, Steve Myatt, Justin Avery, Ken Crafer, Doug Stewart, Roger Crookes, Carol Paris and Trevor Pfeiffer.
Inspired by the story of a young boy fighting leukaemia in the US, Make-A-Wish UK was formed to grant magical wishes to seriously-ill children in the UK. Buying raffle tickets tonight and taking part in the Silent Auction will be a great way of contributing further to the amazing work of Make-A-Wish. For more information visit www.make-a-wish.org.uk.
