Global Journey Music Blog

In September this year, Tesco acquired Scotland-based Dobbies garden centre chain for just under £156 million. While this was a positive step for the retail giant, which is constantly looking to underline its green credentials and keen to get a strong foothold in the lucrative gardening market, it signalled a new threat to garden centres across the UK. They would now have to contend with a well established household brand with very strong buying power.

Although Tesco plans to continue trading using the Dobbies brand, its supermarket retail strategy suggests that it will focus strongly on value and diversification. This, especially during the busy Christmas and New Year periods, places even greater pressure on garden centre retailers to successfully extend their product portfolios and branch out into new areas.

Dealing with diversification

During the last few decades, garden centres have managed to overcome various challenges and have experienced phenomenal growth by introducing new, non-core products. Garden centre diversification really took off during the recession of the early 1980s when retailers were put under pressure to spread their income throughout the year rather than rely on the Spring time rush.

Centres started to introduce cafés and then capitalised on the Christmas market by selling tree lights, tinsel and baubles. As the years passed, the festive product offering boomed from basic decorations to include trees, sophisticated indoor and outdoor decorations, gifts and even grottos. Garden centres throughout the UK became renowned for their special Christmas displays and festive atmospheres, and started to attract large audiences throughout the traditionally quiet winter months.

In the 1990s, garden centres found that one of the most profitable ways to expand was to lease floor space to small concessions, which not only provided rental income but opened up centres to new audiences. Introducing non-core products such as household decorations, gifts, spas and pet products was a natural choice for garden centres to capitalise on and grow these new audiences.

While it may seem that many garden centre retailers have successfully embraced diversification, they cannot rest on their laurels. Perturbed by the threat of supermarkets taking-over garden centres, the Forum for Private Business labelled this as a ‘scary time’ for independent garden centres and suppliers to garden retailers. Getting diversification right can enable centres to continue to cash-in on consumer spending, while getting it wrong can easily drive customers away.

Coping with change

Garden centre retailers should not panic about how the Dobbies takeover may impact on the market and their turnover. If anything, the publicity created by Tesco’s acquisition is good news for garden centres in general as it reiterates their widespread appeal. This is likely to encourage people to pay a visit to their local centre.

Retailers should remain focused on the fact that they have established a strong customer base, which is characterised by brand loyalty. They have already overcome the difficult task of getting customers through the door and now need to channel their energies into tempting customers back on a regular basis. This can be achieved by offering a wider range of unique products.

Making the right choices

It is important for garden centres not to be seduced by passing fads or trends such as the latest children’s toys and novelty gifts. It is likely that fad products will be sold at a wide number of retail outlets, offering centres little differentiation and increasing the risk of products going unsold. Instead, centre retailers should consider stocking products that are not available on general retail. However, they need to ensure that new, non-core products do not:

Compromise their retail environment

Jeopardise core product (plant and garden accessory) sales

Alienate customers

Require a hard-sell

Take-up too much valuable floor space

Similarly, centre retailers should consider the merchandising that a supplier will provide to support product sales. They need to ask suppliers about the costs, functionality, size, colour and appearance of merchandising, before introducing it into their centres. These factors will determine how user and consumer friendly it is, whether it will suit the retail environment, how much space it will require and how much staff time it will command.

Introducing large and overt merchandising spoils the relaxing garden centre experience and the consumer’s willingness to spend money. In addition, merchandising that is hard to set-up and use, requires a hard sell and is irritating, will not appeal to staff or customers and will prove useless.

Merchandising needs to effectively communicate what a product is, the level of product quality and why a consumer would want to buy it. Consumers want to be easily able to differentiate between the levels of product available so they know exactly what they are getting for their money.

Supplier diversification

Like garden centres, Global Journey realise that in order to keep successfully selling products it must constantly evolve and always strive to offer more. More recently, Global Journey branched out into DVDs with the release of its ‘Killer Instinct’ and ‘Wildlife Paradise’ DVD ranges featuring the Discovery Channel’s Rob Bredl. The DVDs offer viewers a close-up look at animals and nature.

For the past eight years, Global Journey has successfully supplied garden centres across the UK with lifestyle music CDs for consumer resale, selling more than one million CDs each year. The CD ranges include titles such as Sounds of Wildlife, Spa and World Music, and are supplied with unique, interactive display stands.

Both CD and DVD display stands are designed to efficiently utilise floor space and neatly present the CDs and DVDs so that front covers are clearly visible and the products easily accessible. The CD display stands include a range of unique features including a touch panel display enabling customers to select and play CD tracks, ambient volume control, no same-day repeat on music tracks and voice guided installation.

The DVD stands have been modified to include a TV screen that plays footage from the DVDs. Both sets of stands are supplied in a range of colours and sizes to suit different retail environments and have space for changeable graphics and pricing.

Introducing the DVD ranges, which also feature crime and war titles, has enabled Global Journey to provide garden centres with another product that appeals to a wide ranging audience and does not require a hard-sell. The DVDs are sold exclusively via garden centres and gift shops, and are proving a huge sales hit.

As diversification becomes increasingly important, Global Journey is looking beyond extending its product range and into other inventive methods of appealing to retailers and consumers. It is finalising an eco-friendly display stand that is made using sheet and tubular steel which is 100% recyclable, features MP3 players to reduce wastage from replacing worn out CD systems and wooden panels manufactured using recycled wood chips.

While the garden centre market is set to become increasingly competitive, there are a number of ways that independent retailers can hold onto and grow their market share. Making the right choices about new products and services will play a key role in this.