Investment in a garden centre makes your business more robust.
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In any sort of retail you’re always in a great deal of competition. For garden centres you have competitors from all different leisure activities.
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You?re also in competition with the online world. This world makes it easy for customers to buy products they need online.
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The more attractive you make your environment, the more likely customers will visit.
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What should you invest in?
To remain attractive garden centre owners will need to prioritise investing in refurbishments.
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Keeping your centre looking fresh and attractive doesn?t mean investing very often.
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Some retailers are good at the occasional refurbishment to a high standard. They last for a long time.
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But if a garden centre has too long a gap between redevelopments, they risk losing customers.
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If your garden centre looks shabby, you risk slipping to your customers? second choice.
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Shoppers are polygamous. They will go elsewhere if they find a better or more comfortable retail environment.
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Look for imbalances in your Garden Centre
Look for indicators that your centre could use a refurb. Start looking at how much space is in each department within the centre. Compare this to that departments? turnover.
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An imbalance in the way that the centres’ categories are performing is a key indicator that improvement needs to happen.
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It?s not uncommon to see a garden centre that has what appears to be too much space for a category or department.
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If centres take a good look at their figures, the majority could free up space.
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Adding a new department is an easy way of growing a garden centres? turnover. A lot of garden centres could reduce the space of their categories without damaging their turnover. It?s all about considering the best use of space and having good organisation.?
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Plan correctly
With any investment within a garden centre, a detailed and careful plan and budget is critical.
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Creating a medium term plan that you and your team believe in is crucial. It will help your team remain focused and maximise the likelihood of success.
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Investing will mean paying for the development before seeing the benefits from it. Having a detailed plan and budget is key.
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Investments are low risk if a business has made sure that they’ve planned completely.
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