Catering once again dished up the best figures in our December 2023 Barometer of Trade (BoT) report with outdoor plants and houseplants also doing well (January 2024).
Up 18.18%, it was the top performing category recorded by our member garden centres last month, excluding the miscellaneous section. It was closely followed by outdoor plants at +17.71%.
Very busy
Peter Burks, our CEO explains: “On my visits to garden centres in December it was clear our members were very busy and this has been confirmed with an excellent trading result to finish the year.
“The figures show a year-to-date variance of +2.93% and that nine of the GCA’s 13 categories recorded by member garden centres saw an uplift during the month.
Categories that also did well
“Once again food is leading the way, with both catering and the food hall/farm shop categories doing well, the latter up 10.76%, making it the third best performing category last month.”
The next category that did well in December, when compared to the same month in 2022, was houseplants at +7.22%, followed by gifts +5.44%, then hard landscaping +4.86%, garden sundries +1.82% and Christmas +1.48%.
Encouraging
Peter adds: “It’s great to see hardy plants and houseplants nicely on the up, as well as the two main festive categories, Christmas and gifts in a positive position. It’s also always nice to see an encouraging figure for the year as a whole.”
According to December’s BoT results, sales of clothing were down slightly to -1.77%, pets and aquatics at -1.89%, seeds and bulbs at -5.96% and furniture & BBQs -16.92%.