Ten Merchandising Lessons for Garden Centres

Ten Merchandising Lessons for Garden Centres

Signs are not just for prices.

Use your POS Displays to give customers a reason to buy.  Clear signage attached to your shelving and display units can give information on plants, what they are, when they flower and their growing preferences.

Arrange your plants.

Planting arrangements are a great way to increase sales.  Customers often like to be shown how to display their selection of plants to the best advantage and the visual impact of a well thought out, not too complex, planting pattern can give confidence to less knowledgeable visitors and enable them to recreate it at home.

Uniqueness.

It safe to say everyone wants their garden to be unique to them, so show them how it’s done.  A large range of unique, rustic display units are available from reliable suppliers.  Using things like crates, a cart and even a truly individual centre piece can spark ideas and encourage sales of a particular range of plants.

Involve children.

Children are usually great lovers of the outdoors, plants, trees and shrubs so get them involved.  Consider running events, competitions, having ‘a shrub trail’ or ‘find the insect’ hunt.  These are easily done, relatively low cost and make a garden centre visit more interesting for families.  Some larger than life bees, ladybirds, ants and butterflies positioned carefully on your retail shelving and display units will soon be spotted by young eager eyes!

 

Shop Display Furniture

 

Consider the elderly and less-abled.

There is a tendency to try to cram as much as possible into the space available but a large percentage of your visitors may be the elderly or those a little less-abled.  Keep your aisles wide, clear and safe. Have lower height displays and keep plants easy to reach.  Remove any trip hazards and make sure your plant, giftware and bakery display units are safe and in good condition.

Petcare.

Petcare often forms a large section of your garden centre but has slightly different display requirement.  Your shop shelving needs to be sturdy, strong and often large to accommodate large bags of food.  It needs to be adaptable with readily available components to keep up with the ever-changing consumer appetite so choose a good reliable shopfittings supplier.

Shelving for pets

Café, giftware and water features.

Don’t underestimate the power of up-selling in your café, if you have one.  Many shelving units designed for cafes are equally suited to feature displays.  Create an eye-catching feature within your café or around the boundaries using your water feature merchandise, giftware and carefully selected plants for customers to browse and view whilst relaxing, enjoying some fresh home baking.

Gardening workshops and ‘how to’ guides.

Gardening workshops are useful informative events as well a way to entice more visitors and purchases.  A knowledgeable member of staff can run a short workshop on how to take cuttings, how to shape hedges and how to create a hanging basket display.  Some ‘how to’ guides, which can be distributed or collected by customers, placed strategically next to products, plants or promotional displays will encourage people to try something new.

Seasons and vegetables.

Of course, gardening is seasonal particularly for keen vegetable growers, rotate your displays according to the season, revisit the workshop and how to guides and target the allotment customer with good images. Consider incorporating your own ‘home grown’ produce into your café meals and snacks.

The digital era.

Embrace the digital era, it is part of daily life, and utilise it to promote your stock, your tasty café, your seasonal promotions and of course, those popular workshops and how to guides.  Social media is like your chatty bubbly friend that talks to everyone so be passionate about your business and get promoting!

Garden Centre Display Shelving

If you would like to see more products or chat to us about how we can help you achieve better product display solutions, call us on 0800 587 5880 and speak to one of our friendly knowledgeable team members or alternatively, you can visit our website and order directly from www.crowndisplay.co.uk

 

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