BoT May figures reveal small positive year-to-date increase despite weather
Our Barometer of Trade (BoT) figures for May are out today (June 19, 2024) and reveal that despite the weather there was a small positive year-to-date increase of +3.72%.
According to the data from our member garden centres, 11 of the 13 categories recorded were up when compared to May 2023 too.
Traditional sales down
Our CEO, Peter Burks, says: “As expected, given the lack of any sort of decent weather for gardening, some of May’s traditional sales have come in slightly down on last year.
“However, it is interesting to note that the results for the two smaller turnover bands show quite nice increases, up respectively by +7.18% and +4.95%, it is the largest garden centres that seem to have suffered the most and are down slightly by -3.44%.
Catering &clothing up
“As usual, in bad weather, the best performing categories were once again catering, clothing, food halls and farm shops and giftware. Overall, we are still seeing a small positive increase in the year-to-date figure and our members seem on the whole pretty pragmatic about the weather.”
Excluding the miscellaneous section (+34.52%), our top performing category in May 2024 was catering, up +17.97%, when compared to the same month in 2023. This was followed by clothing +15.34%.
Gifts & food hall/farm shop up
Gifts was the fourth best performer of the month in at +10.58%, the food hall/farm shop category came in next at +10.47%, then pet & aquatics +6.31%, houseplants +3.81%, garden sundries at +2.76% and furniture & BBQs +2.31%.
Outdoor plants down
Christmas was +1.04% and hard landscaping at +1.01%, outdoor plants at -1.22% and seeds & bulbs -31.18%.