One-stop shops

摘要

More and more people are choosing cash and carries as the place to pick up plants for landscaping projects, for growing on and for stocking shelves in shops and garden centres. Cash and carries cater for a wide customer base and it is a base that, particularly in landscaping, is expanding. The result is a broadening, in some cases changing, product profile within the cash-and-carry environment and greater emphasis on service and advice. Landscapers and local authorities continue to pick up their planting requirements at local cash-and-carry facilities. But increasingly, garden designers are also making use of these off-the-shelf, one-stop shops. Manager Mary Sullivan of Notcutts' cash-and-carry site at St Albans is one to have noticed the trend. "We're seeing more garden designers coming to buy plants for the designs they are working on," she says. "They're starting to realise that they're entitled to wholesale prices too and that they don't have to go into retail centres and pay retail prices."