GTN BESTSELLERS ANALYSIS

Growing media, plants and garden products have been the star performers in the GTN Bestsellers EPOS data ever since re-opening. Growing media Top 50 volume sales were down 2.3% year on year as garden centres closed at the end of March and with zero sales recorded during the seven weeks of closure, when centres re-opened the growing media deficit was 50.4%. Amazingly, despite shortages meaning centres were sometimes running out of stock during May and June, growing media has sold at record levels for every month since

May and ended the year UP 3.5% on 2019 and 10% up on the previous three years too! Plants also saw record monthly sales post re-opening, but the hole left by missed bedding plant sales in April just couldn’t be made up and the GTN Bestsellers All Plant sales index has closed the year 19% down. As levels of gardening activity soared during the summer so did garden product sales, particularly driven by massive increases in pot sales. The 52% year on year volume deficit as centres re-opened dropped to minus 8.4% by the end of the year.

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GTN Bestsellers is a weekly subscription service provided by GTN using EPOS data supplied by garden centres. A year’s subscription to receive the printed newsletter with Top 50 Bestselling Product Charts every week costs just £145. Full details and a payment links can be found in the GTN Xtra e-mail newsletter www.gardentradenews.co.uk. Or e-mail: trevor@pottingshedpress.co.uk

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