Garden centres survive wettest ever January with record sales
Weather experts told us this week that we’ve just had the wettest January on record – and wet weather normally means fewer garden centre sales. But the visit-ability of garden centres and somewhat milder weather than normal has resulted in the GTN Bestsellers all products data for the first four weeks of the year reaching an all-time high in January 2014 (see 6-year graph above).
From the epos data supplied to us by garden centres, we can see that it was the New Year sales that got the momentum going and since then, footfall has remained higher than usual, resulting in increased restaurant transactions and early bird garden product sales. The only area yet to really get going is wild bird care. We’re guessing that we’ll need a spell of frost and snow to persuade customers that feeding their birds should be taken seriously once again.
With January sales accounting for 5% of a year’s sales volume, this increase may not have a huge impact on the rest of the year. However, as we found at the Garden Centre Association conference earlier this week, it has certainly put everyone – retailers and suppliers – in a great frame of mind. Could a record January be leading to a record year? Whatever you did to beat the weather in January, bottle it for use throughout the year and keep an eye on those forecasts…
GTN Bestsellers Top 50 sales volumes compared to the same week last year
