Ponderingthe future direction of garden centres was high on the agenda at garden and leisure trade show Glee last week. Themes from the show were diverse, but included continued reliance on grow your own as a trend, with no clear new sales theme or way of reinvigorating product or plant displays emerging. Even meerkats, a sales boom area of 2010, appears to be slowing. Bird care is an opportunity, if show launches are anything to go by, but while exhibitors such as Westland insist that they want to grow the market rather than take from others, it seems many new products are going head-to-head with existing ranges. The introspection was especially apparent in the seminars at the show, which had 100 more exhibitors, at 700, than in 2009. Using technology to understand buying trends was a big theme.
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