2013

On my journey North I stopped over in Dubai and stayed with Danny Powell who is a client and the manager of Dubai Garden Centre. In my conference presentations I have been promoting the fact that in today’s world garden centres need to excel at plants and gardening, but also need extra categories. Dubai Garden […]

Last year at the Irish conference I mentioned a Facebook promotion that garden centres had developed in Australia. The Irish industry took this idea on board and this spring launched a campaign “Spread a Little Happiness”. They distributed plants in the community and customers had to give the plant a girls name and register them

In conference presentations I talk about the fact that in the next five years we will see the biggest changes in our lifetime. Remember 2002? Basically only ten years ago…look at what has changed in internet use, and how it affects our marketing. in 2002 we had 9.1% of the global population using the internet…now

The Irish Retail Excellence conference was excellent and it was great to meet old and new friends. The retailer who is leading the way in Ireland is, in my opinion, Easons. Connor Whelan and the team are doing a great job. Check their store out on Google pictures. I was intrigued with some merchandising ideas.

Channel 7 is one of the major TV stations in Australia. During the week of 8th April I presented a session on the Garden Guru’s show on retailing and marketing of strawberries. It caused quite a reaction. It’s interesting – how you have to present yourself in the media. I said “Many researchers believe that

I have discovered two books that could be of help to you in business. One is focused on the farm market industry and the other on the garden industry and both are from Ontario in Canada Pot It Up By Frankie Flowers {yes, that is his real name} The garden industry today is about providing

Flowering plant sales in Japan have dropped by 22.2% in the last five years. There are many reasons for this, one is the lack of marketing, another is a reliance on the auction system that has devalued plants and made them a commodity and another is the lack of displays that appeal to the targeted

The major independent garden centre conference and trade show in the USA is held every August in Chicago. This year John Stanley is the keynote speaker on the Thursday of the conference. The show is one of the best shows in the USA to reveal new products to the garden trade. It also has three