Our August Barometer of Trade (BoT) figures have revealed an ‘excellent month’ with members seeing an uplift in 11 of the 13 categories recorded (2023).
Out this week, our BoT also highlighted a positive year-to-date variance of +1.13% for member garden centres.
Encouraging result
Peter Burks, our Chief Executive, explains: “August was an excellent month with all categories being up, except two, producing a very encouraging result overall. Plants, seeds and bulbs all performed well, suggesting our customers were taking advantage of the cool and damp conditions to keep planting; with large, strong, early displays of autumn colour helping.
Broad retail offering
“To add to this, the benefits of having a broad retail offering came into play on those wetter days. All departments showed improvement over last year, except for a small decline in garden sundries, and the problems in furniture and BBQ sales remain ongoing. Restaurants remain buoyant and continued their strong year with another big increase.”
According to the BoT results, furniture and BBQ sales were at -40.8%.
Seeds & bulbs best category
The best category in August was seeds & bulbs at +26.45%; followed by clothing at +20.84% and outdoor plants at +18.59%. Catering recorded +17.53% for the month.
The food hall/farm shop category was up +12.54%, pets & aquatics jumped by +8.62% and gifts by +6.07% when compared to August 2022.
Houseplants came in at +3.42%, hard landscaping was up +2.45% and garden sundries down to -1.26%.