John’s Blog

During this tour I have seen a blending of autumn displays blending into Christmas promotions and wonder if this will continue to be a trend. Pumpkins are an ideal product for getting the autumn feel across, at our hotel in Torino they were used as part of an autumn floral decoration.    

The main reason Linda and I wanted to be in Torino in late October was to visit “Salone Internationale del Gusto…Terra Madre” which is organised by the Slow Food Movement. This organisation has come a long way since Carlo Petrini objected to McDonalds setting up a store in Rome and felt something needed to be done to promote local foods. This organisation has a movement in many countries around the

Those who read my October newsletter will remember the Dutch retail food offer I mentioned that was being developed based on an Italian model. That retailer was Eataly. One of the top food retailers in Italy is Eataly, which is located in a old warehouse next to the Fiat factory complex in Torino close to where the exhibition hall is located. This is a must see retailer: Eataly specialises in

Research conducted in 2013 by Gallo wines indicated that 32% of growth in sales come from new products. It would be interesting to find if this relates to all products retailed, it does show the “power of new“.  

An associate of mine, Trevor Cochrane from Western Australia, brought to my attention an article that came online on the BBC in September. It looked at the future retail High Street and shows the changes we could be in for. Interesting to note they believed that small boutique retailers would still flourish as the consumer was looking for the unique nostalgia retail offer amongst all the high tech.

This is a message that I have been promoting of late and I have come across two new suppliers to the garden industry that were not part of the industry and hence did not know what the box looked like. As a result they invented unique products for the market. One supplier comes from Oregon and the best way I can describe his product is large lego bricks to design

I do believe a study of what is happening in the UK supermarket industry is an indicator of what could happen in other retail sectors around the world. Twelve months ago Tesco’s was looked upon as the innovator in retailing, not only in the UK , but around the world. This company seems to be going from bad publicity to bad publicity and losing market share as a result. They

A study of what is happening to the British food retail sector may indicate what could happen to other retailers in other parts of the world. Until 2014 the British food retail sector was reasonably stable with a clear market leader with one retail pound in eight retail spent pounds being used to purchase goods from that retail leader. It was a company that aimed to please the whole consumer

Whilst one part of food retailing is looking for new direction, the boutique food retailers are still growing from strength to strength and in the most unusual places. This may look like it is located in a boutique retail area or a farmers market, but it is at St. Pancras Railway Station in central London. Ideas can be found in the most unusual placed. A glimpse into the future of

“If you know what tomorrow will bring…what would you do different today?” That is a byline from chlorosphere, the French trends consultants. I had the opportunity to present alongside this company at a Belgium DIY and garden conference in October. Chlorosphere are the only trends consultancy company that purely looks at trends in outdoor living and they produce a comprehensive book on these trends every October. They look at consumers

Retailing is about being an entrepreneur and some of the winning ideas can be quite simple. Take for example the peach truck in Ohio. A farmer in the southern part of the State contacted local garden centres and asked if he could place his peach truck in the parking lot of garden centres of a weekend when peaches were in season and sell his fruit by the box. This has

While in the USA I presented some workshops with my colleague Sid Raisch. One of his presentations is how are independent retailers building a strategy to combat the Amazon effect and how it is changing all our shopping habits. One person in Sid’s audience mentioned he sold trees and that tree retailing would not be concerned with the Amazon effect. I guess this retailer had not been to an excellent

Whilst I am mentioning Sid, he was adamant we went to Voodoo while in Portland. This is a one-store operator, not in the best retail location, that only accepts cash, will not give cents change, and you have to line up to be served for at least 30 minutes! This is not what I would call a strategy for a destination retailer. Yet, I lined up for my Bacon Doughnut…AND

Following my Voodoo experience Sid and I travelled to Mount Hood and to the hotel and restaurant at the National Park. There we were exposed to a “bacon experience”. The breakfast offered different selections of artisan bacon. Think what experiences you could offer that makes you, as they say in Portland, WEIRD

Whilst in Oregon I met up with Gary Oppenheimer, A CNN Hero and founder of AmpleHarvest.org. What Do AmpleHarvest.org Do? They enable consumers to eliminate hunger and malnutrition in their own community. AmpleHarvest.org connects, in the USA, 40+ million Americans with excess food in their garden and local food pantries. Garden by garden, home and community gardeners and other growers are fighting hunger and malnutrition in America. Their core mission: No

I have worked with libraries around the world for many years, but in recent years many libraries a have become a problem for Local Councils as they have not kept up with consumer trends. Over the last two months I have discovered two entrepreneurial libraries, Mundijong in Western Australia who won the best library in the State, and Howard County Library near Baltimore in the USA, that was awarded the

Finally farmers markets are moving into the management software arena with the introduction this month of a software program coming out of Australia. Farm Market managers can now mange the market from their iPad. Sitetrak is the name of the program and it is worth checking out.  

I was working in Tasmania, Australia at the start of the month and dropped into the Tourist Bureau and discovered a great leaflet from the town of Burnie. It was entitled “meet the MAKERS of BURNIE. There’s a story around every corner”. The leaflet talks about the people first and then the businesses. It was divided into the “Garden Makers”,” Cheese Makers,” “Whisky Makers” and so on. Such an inspiring

Many of you will have attended one of my Ghost Town, Clone Town, Home Town workshops. One of the main concerns in communities is what do you do with empty shop fronts. Look what Liverpool in the UK are doing. “Opera for Chinatown ” is held in Duke Street which is the oldest Chinese community in Europe. The city has taken old buildings and created murals in the windows of

There are only 1600 pandas left in the world according to WWF. This is a marketing opportunity to make people aware of the crisis and to build tourism. WWF joined forces with French artist Paulo Grangeon this year to create the “1600 Panda World Tour”. 1600 cuddly pandas are travelling the world in force. I came across them in Hong Kong where the airline Cathy Pacific brought them to Hong Kong

We are all aware that retailing is changing, but, are you taking the appropriate steps to work with the changes? Many performance reports I see have the same pattern. Overall in-store sales down, gross profit down, average sale and average price down, whilst stock turn is up. This indicates that retailers are drawing consumers in based on price. This may work in the short term, but is not a long

The industry is about to see the “millennials” customer become more interested in garden products as they develop their homes. These are your 20 to 30 year old consumers, who are moving into apartments and new houses and looking for inspiration to make their homes unique. Compared to older customer groups they are more distrusting of company advertising, are wary of in-house marketing and engage with each other and businesses

Over the last few months we have been working with a major retailer in Manila developing their retail strategy over the next few years. This has included consultancy and workshops with the key stakeholders. This has been a fun project to be involved with and we have seen the team grow and develop over that period.  

New Vision” Forum is a two day workshop designed specifically and only for leading retailers in the garden and farm retail sectors. The Forum is a high powered visionary think-tank for industry leaders to help them develop a focused strategy to continue to grow business and industry over the next few years. A new series of New Vision workshops are planned and I urge you to book now if you

During recent weeks I have presented at a number of conferences that have focused on “local” and the importance of local businesses to the community. When it comes to “local” I am in the confused group as like many consumers I am not sure what local means. I am fully aware that the dictionary definition is “relating or restricted to a particular area or one’s neighbourhood”. But, what is one’s