Using displays to make more sales
Garden centre merchandising is a field that is catching up with the sophisticated linked sales, hot-spot and bounce-back techniques seen in supermarkets.
Whitehall Garden Centre director Mark Self says fortnightly changing promotions on displays next to tills are his hot merchandising tip - but he worries that he is not doing enough outside to make his plants look more appealing.
Consultant Eve Tigwell says many garden centres must look at the basics of merchandising:
- Reachability: Customers must be able to reach what they buy.
- Shopability: Hexagonal plant benches are often arranged with plants in concentric circles. Arrange plants as "cake slices" so they are easier to access.
- Simplification: "It's no good having a jumble of plants," Tigwell says. "Put two or three that fit together on one bench."
- Colour themes: Tigwell says A-Z plant displays are becoming less understood by customers so displays by colour themes can be more effective to boost sales. Newcastle-based Cowell's Garden Centre's wheelbarrows of colour-themed plants are a good example, she explains.
- Photos: "Three dead twigs in a black pot" is how Tigwell describes out-of-season roses. The solution is big pictures of blooming roses behind the plants.
- Linked products: Tigwell says: "There's so much potential that is still untapped. Grow-your-own (GYO), for instance, is going up the schedule this year and centres have to grab it." Linked products can help increase basket spend in this area.
Linked sales are about sales maximisation, says Spotless Punch general manager Graham Mountford: "Maximising sales isn't just about offering the right products at the right price, it's also vital to position them in-store for the maximum uptake."
He adds: "Good merchandising can make a dramatic difference to the success of a product - as Fito Drip Feeders have proved." The 99p "wonderful impulse purchase" is positioned next to houseplants in a merchandising unit that contains 40 vials. Garden centres have reported a linked sales rate with plants of around 70 per cent.
Mountford says: "Unlike supermarkets, which are dominated by shelf merchandising, the garden trade has greater flexibility to bring to merchandising. Drip Feeders are just one example of how the garden trade's strength in attractive and creative merchandising not only provides a more enjoyable shopping experience but also leads to better sales."
Spotless: Punch has recently introduced a new free-standing merchandising unit designed to offer the core range of Fito houseplant care lines in a space-efficient way in the houseplant section.
Mountford adds: "The garden trade is very good at getting people into the store. What's important is to make the most of every visit. One very good way to do that is by increasing the amount people spend on impulse and linked sales, and the key to both of these is good merchandising. With Drip Feeders and our new free-standing unit, it's easy for retailers to position products exactly where they're most likely to produce sales."
Scotsdales Garden Centre managing director Caroline Owen advises: "Have a look at what supermarkets do."
The Cambridge-based Garden Retail Award winner uses the example of Camellia. Selling specialist ericaeous compost and food alongside plants can double customers' spend.
Owen says GYO is an area where garden centres have done well with displays and merchandising. But there is a danger that centres will not offer enough advice in their eagerness to sell products.
Owen says: "Customers only take a few seconds to make their buying decision. But if you can give a couple of tips with the merchandising that's excellent. Westland and Scotts have made fabulous GYO merchandising this year, which has great advice on it."
HTA marketing director Andrew Maxted says the aim of merchandising is to excite and enthuse customers to make buying decisions. Good displays combine this with inspiration.
This spring, the HTA's Plant for Life campaign will focus on two themes in garden centres: wildlife and colour. The first will be about using plants to attract butterflies into the garden, which ties in with new displays at RHS Wisley, Surrey, and Butterfly World at the National Garden of the Rose in Hertfordshire.
The colour campaign aims to raise awareness of plants and how they can improve quality of life through a variety of marketing and merchandising techniques. Maxted says: "Colour is a fantastic driver for business in garden centres. Colour links lifestyle, home and garden. We know it drives renewed interest in makeover garden projects and new planting schemes."
Display Solutions
Axiom Displays has developed a range of solutions specifically for garden centres covering gifts, homeware, greeting cards, books and gift wrap.
Managing director Richard Wright says: "Greater impact is essential to attract customers towards non-destination products. The new range is designed to help overcome the visual overload problem inherent in this sector."
He adds that Axiom's 50 years of experience show that in a downturn "those retailers whose product displays look dull and tired always suffer most".
Axiom has been working with centres including Wyevale for many years, often coordinating with the branded product suppliers to provide a one-stop shop.
Merchandising Tips
Stagecraft managing director Tom Davis says farm shop and food hall shopfittings are driving his Powys-based business.
Stagecraft's big project this spring is to supply GYO crates, benching and signage for all of Wyevale's centres.
Davis says garden centres are "topping up" tables and benching for spring. Stagecraft is sending flyers to customers offering flatpack bedding and planteria displays. The company's website has a new marketplace area offering equipment that is ready for delivery for self-assembly. Davis says: "It's easily self-installed and can be delivered in a week."
Davis says prospects for the display industry all depend on the weather: "If the spring goes well then people will spend money on bringing things up to date. If it doesn't, they won't."
Display styles that garden centres are looking for will be more theatrical, striking and attention-grabbing with more colour graphics, says Davis.
West London-based shopfitter Salepoint managing director Dennis Wilmot says: "After five years' spring weather being so atrocious that garden centres have diversified hugely, it is appropriate to consider what is in place for the coming season. For several years the giftware department got all the attention; recently the coffee shop has been top of the priority list. Certainly the after-Christmas spend on basic shopfitting units for gardening sundries like planters, tools and chemicals has been well down, replaced largely by a summer gear-up for Christmas."
Every garden centre operator has been advised many times about the dangers of shrinking the horticultural offering too much. This is where it all stems from; every diversification is intrinsically linked to some form of horticulture, with Christmas trees being the most basic link. Yet there are other reasons that are just as important. If the giftware, food, cookware, books and toys do not shrink back straight after Christmas, not only may there not be enough space to show you are a "real" garden centre, but the proper management of these other departments will have gone out of the window. If these diversifications are allowed to "creep" indefinitely, it is impossible to measure properly their returns on space or on inventory, nor organise well-planned and located promotions or many other aspects of professional merchandising.
Episys marketing director Peter Lewis says the company has introduced its Retail Enterprise Suite signage product into B&Q stores across the UK. Retailers create shelf-edge labels and smaller promotional signs and either transport them to their stores or have them printed in-store if they have printing capability. Large-format signs that would normally be printed by an external printing agency can also be created in-house and PDFs sent to the agency.
Retail Enterprise Suite can be integrated with EPoS systems to pick up price changes or feature changes and automatically print new signs for the relevant stores. The system can also be integrated with the inventory system to only send the right signage to those stores that sell the items.
Bayer Garden's mini media players are small, shelf-mounted TV screens that play short films, presented by gardener Martin Fish. The films cover some of Bayer Garden's key products.
Bayer Garden managing director Tommy Gill says: "What's great about the players is that they are motion-activated, so will only start playing when the shopper is right there. As the films are not on a loop, shoppers will see each one from the beginning. This holds their attention and delivers crucial information to clinch the sale."
Longacres Nursery representative Tony Carter says: "The mini media players have been great - they do the work for you, truly prompting sales."
Grovewell Garden Centres owner Edward Boult says bounce-back offers are his best merchandising/marketing technique. Tokens on the till offering multi-buys or free cups of coffee can produce up to 2,500 returns ("bounce-backs") by customers.