GTN Xtra had the opportunity this morning to meet Dobbies CEO, David Robinson at their Brighton Garden Centre which has undergone a facelift, including reopening areas that had previously been closed off to create a bigger retailing area and increased food and drink offerings.  See our photo tour of the centre below and read the full interview in the May issue of GTN magazine.

Towards the end of our walk around the centre I asked David about his views of garden centre retailing since he joined them in Juy 2023 having previously been at Pets at Home, Argos and Homebase: "The things that attracted me to the business [Dobbies] remain true. Which is garden centres are just a lovely way of people spending time. And I genuinely think it is a really good model for the future of retail because it's part experiential, part service, part retail. And I think that's where retail is going in general. So I really like the garden centre sector.

"Having competed a lot with Amazon and online, it's much harder for pure play to disrupt a garden centre. Just the sociability of it, the browse-ability of it. And some of the products don't fit through the supply chain as well. So it's got really good fundamentals because the market's been growing. We use our gardens for more things than we ever used to. So actually good fundamentals. A model that works for the 21st century.

"I really like the scale and the brand of Dobbies. When I was coming in, [July 2023] I could see that there were things I could get after. There were retailing things that would make me annoyed as I went round stores and we've had to do a bit more tidying up than I'd anticipated. But we've done that and all of the opportunity and probably more stands ahead of us. Great people. Great brand. Good loyal customers. And a lot of the things we're doing are just good, sensible retailing principles.

"I think the core business has been underinvested. And the real opportunity is to drive the core business, as you see today in Brighton. We've got a pretty ambitious five year plan. We've got lots of thoughts. But for now, we've got to run stores well. That's what I've told the team. And then that buys us opportunities to do lots of other things afterwards. But at this stage, run the stores well."

Read the full interview in the May issue of Garden Trade News magazine.