GCA CEO, Peter Burks, writes: The early summer sees the end of the annual inspection window for our member garden centres. Every Garden Centre Association member garden centre gets an unannounced visit from one of our team of four expert inspectors during the three-month period from mid-March to mid-June.
There are 218 individual factors that are inspected and scored, usually out of 10, which cover every area of the garden centre, from their appearance from the roadside, to the toilets, restaurant and every retail area including indoor lifestyle, giftware and clothing. It also includes three random phone calls and email enquiries, and a review of each garden centre’s social media.
Every centre must score at least 50% in order to remain a member of the Garden Centre Association, so it is a way of maintaining the standards of our members, as well as a tool for all members to use to improve their standards in any given area.
We split the country into four regions, basically North, South, East and West and once all the inspections are completed, we can then work out the best performers in each category for each area. We hold area awards evenings when every centre is invited to a member garden centre to hear the inspector of that area review what they have seen with a huge array of pictures of best practice to be shared with all attendees. At least 100 members attend each of these events. We also do national awards for each retail category such as Indoor Living, Outdoor Living, Catering etc, which are usually sponsored by a supplier to that section.
These national awards are announced at our annual conference in January. The retail standards in our Giftware and Indoor Living sections have been rising steadily during the last few years and I’m very pleased to say that in this year’s scoring 18 centres achieved scores of over 80% with four scoring over 90%!
Some are getting close to the full 10, almost perfect! These centres are of varying sizes so it’s not just the biggest that are getting this category right. The standards of visual merchandising all around the country are truly superb. At this time of the year, we are saying goodbye to the gardening season and the gradual reduction in gardening stock begins. This should be imperceptible to our gardening customers, so they do not feel the main reason for visiting a garden centre is being eroded in favour of the Christmas season.
Christmas, for some bigger centres, is now producing the biggest months sales in the year. For this reason, we also inspect some centres in November as well, and hold a separate Christmas competition, announced in early December, so that winning centres can use this in their social media, PR and advertising campaigns immediately.
In a year where the weather has had such a negative impact on our key gardening season, a fantastic Christmas time will do much to ensure that the year is not a complete financial disaster.
