36-37_Yarnton Ohh Deer.qxp_Grid 10/05/2024 18:02 Page 2
Retailer Face to Face
SPINNING A YARN(TON) From little seeds, big ideas not only germinate, but breathe new life. This is certainly what has happened where Yarnton Home & Garden and greeting card publisher and stationery company, Ohh Deer are concerned. The culmination being there for all to see in a stunning brand new 800sqft design-led greeting card and stationery department which forms part of the impressive revitalisation of the Oxfordshire garden centre emporium. PG alighted at ‘Yarnton Parkway’, the railway station adorned by blooming treats from the centre, for the grand tour with Celia Leeson-Cox, its head of creative and visual merchandising. Greeting cards have long been a part of Yarnton Home & Garden’s offer, in fact it previously had a more traditional greeting selection in the plants section as well as a bijou design-led area elsewhere - but as part of the centre’s strategy to really champion the product area, a new department, which is four times larger than its previous greeting card footprint, came to life last month. “I have always loved Ohh Deer’s products as well as how it goes about things, and felt that the vibe of its trade show stands would work well at Yarnton,” explained Celia Leeson-Cox, its head of creative and visual merchandising. Celia has a deep passion for greeting cards, and a wealth of experience not least amassed from owning her own greeting card shops for 15 years before bringing her buying and merchandising skills into the garden centre arena. Like many other garden centres, until relatively recently Yarnton’s non-horticultural 36 PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
retailing offer was anchored by third party branded concessions. “When I joined Yarnton five and half years ago, we had several concession departments from Peacocks, Woollen Mill and The Works, among others. However, at that time we were also building what was to become our multi-award-winning playbarn, The Magic Garden, which we knew would bring in a brand new young community that would join our loyal gardening community of shoppers, so we could sense we needed to court and accommodate a changing customer base, while improving the service and selection for our traditional customer base,” explains Celia. With the pandemic accelerating matters, seeing the demise of some concessions and a change of direction of others, Yarnton found itself back in full charge of curating
Above: (right-left) Ohh Deer’s Mark Callaby, Jamie Mitchell, Harry Ferrin and agent Reg Shaw, who was the first port of call when Yarnton’s Celia had the idea for the new department. Below: (left-right) Yarnton’s head of creative Celia Leeson-Cox, md Glen Sheldrake and Jennifer Brampton, who has joined the team recently as card buyer. Bottom: Just part of the new greeting card, stationery and arts & crafts area.
a sizeable retailing space for its centre, an opportunity which Celia and her colleague home, gift and fashion buyer, Bryony TaylorEdwards, grasped with great gusto.