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Retailer Face To Face
Fertile Ground The Blue Diamond Group has several reasons to blow a trumpet of celebration. Coinciding with winning two awards at The Retas - Best Garden Centre Retailer of Greeting Cards and the top accolade of Greeting Card Retailer of the Year - the garden centre retail group announced that it has acquired another six centres, taking it up to 36 locations. PG ventured to East Bridgford to dig deeper with Angie Goosen, who heads up the card, gift and book buying for the group. Blue Diamond is certainly finding fertile ground for growth - both on greeting card sales as well as expansion of the garden centre group itself. “What a crazy, fantastic week it’s been!” exclaimed Blue Diamond’s category manager Angie Goosen last month, (whose buying remit spans greeting cards, giftwrap, gifts and books). “Having never been to The Retas before, I went home at the end of an amazing day with two trophies - and that was on top of the news that the deal had been signed on another six centres being brought into the group.” With the entrepreneurial dynamo of Alan Roper at the helm as managing director, the garden centre group already had the bit between its teeth to expand, so when Wyevale found itself in difficulty, Blue Diamond was not backwards in coming forward to snaffle some of the key sites and is preparing to work its magic on them. Blue
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PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
Above: Blue Diamond’s Angie Goosen with the garden centre group’s two Retas trophies. Left: While horticulture is the bedrock of the business, as Blue Diamond’s East Bridgford centre demonstrates, the nonplant departments and restaurants are also seen as key draws for customers. Below: The fresh and airy greeting card department in Blue Diamond’s East Bridgford centre.
Diamond Group, already the third largest garden centre operator in the UK, is now trading from 36 centres, and you get the distinct feeling that there is more to come. However it is the company’s inspiring approach to its retailing emporiums that has seen it win plaudits, from customers and the trade alike. And this anewed embrace of opportunities, as evidenced by its two recent Retas wins, has extended into greeting cards.
Angie has enjoyed something of an exciting ride since she joined as category manager at start of this year. Having only moved to the UK from her native South Africa four years ago, while she had some retail experience (with Mr Price, a South African equivalent of Next), by her own admission, she was by no means a greeting card expert. “South Africa’s unreliable postal system has severely hampered the card sending in