John’s Blog

In October John was interviewed by the Quebec Nursery Association on his views on garden centre trends around the world....

The largest garden centre in Europe, possibly the world! Garden centres open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! These were key surprises for me looking at the industry around Moscow. I had been invited to Russia to present a key note address and workshop to the floriculture and...

If you have a large market of multi millionaires, your marketing strategies change and this is obvious around Moscow. The Orangery, part of the Crocus Group, has the largest selection of indoor plants in one location I have seen anywhere. It is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a...

The florist industry around the world is being pressurized by supermarkets and online retailers selling flowers. I am speaking at the Interflora conference in October and am aware of the concerns of the industry. We need to create experiences where the consumer can buy into the idea of visiting a...

Farmers markets and farm shops around the world are concerned about the supermarkets taking their business from them. I do not believe this should be the case as there are many opportunities to create a difference in the market place. In the UK there is a decline in an awareness...

One of the big issues in Europe is food a waste and the amount of food being thrown away by supermarkets. France has introduced a no waste policy and fresh food that would be discarded is now donated to charities. In the UK Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall of River Cottage fame has...

One of the best ways of getting your name out into the community is to have a selfie location. The key is to make sure your name is clearly visible behind the selfie location. Alas, most businesses forget to do this. Having said that it has been great to see...

There have been a number of articles about the demise of the florist in recent weeks. Florists seem to be hit by the changes that are taking place in retailing and those that have stuck to the old model have seen a decline in sales. Those that reinvent themselves are...

A one day workshop aimed at established retail owners and senior management, by John Stanley. Established retailers have seen the market mature; what they did in the past will not work in the future and new ways of developing the business need to be considered. This workshop provides an “ideas...

9 out of 10 Australians prefer to buy locally made products (Ref: Eloise Keating Smart Company 06/1/2016) According to all the surveys coming out, locally made, is increasing in popularity. Local is very much being used more in conversation, but what is “local”? According to the dictionary, local means “existing...

Keeping up with what is happening in the garden retail category is confusing at present. One report was published just before the Chelsea Flower Show based on work done by the RHS which showed that in the UK Millennials and Gen X were not gardening due to the lack of...

As a consultant to retailers for over 40 years I have to admit one of my sins. I was pro adding music into the retail environment. As human beings we hate silence and if we do experience silence we start making some sort of noise…silence is deafening. As consumers we...

Marketing continues to get more complicated as new social media marketing tools continue to be developed and the consumer becomes more acquainted and confident with social media. The challenge for many business owners is to keep up with a more demanding consumer, the answer may be to go back to...

It is your first time in a new country, the culture is different, the currency is different, they do not speak your language and you have to give a business talk to a professional audience. Many speakers been in this situation and often panic sets in. How are you going...

J Schwanke, of uBloom, is one of the trend setters. His latest newsletter, Trend Synthesis talks about the four trends he sees being developed in 2016. These trends are what he calls… Distraction. This is where bright colours are used to attract the eye in a world where there is...

Retailing is constantly changing and so is how we sell. I remember my early workshops training team members to sell product, we would do a session where we would get workshop participants to identify the features of the products and then convert them to the benefits of the product. We...

I often talk about impulse selling in my presentations. It is something that is important to all retailers and a way of increasing the average sale per customer. In January, Plyush Sharma, a Professor at Curtin University in Western Australia, released a research paper on impulse selling. His research reveals...

In December there was a fascinating article in The Daily Mail in the UK about the look of retirement homes in the future. This article discussed the ‘Home Farm” concept where the home a was part of a farm complex with vertical and horizontal food gardens as part of the...

As retailers we need to be in-tune with our female Millennial consumers. For some this is easy, whilst for others it is more difficult. I was therefore interested to read an article in the November edition of “Speaker”, written by Frances Rios and entitled “What Women Want.” According to Frances…...

Many of you will know that Linda and I own a chestnut farm in Nannup in West Australia. In November a book was launched that features 30 farms in the region that were doing something unique. This coffee table book included our farm, Chestnut Brae. It is wonderful that we...

Consumers are increasingly looking for local products. In the UK the main avenue has been Farm Shops whilst in Europe it has been via Farmer’s Markets. In Australia it has been the Farmer Market that has been the main driver of getting local food to local people. This is now...

Online grocery shopping is now well established. The problem for most consumers is that it has been a boring interface. Now that is all changing. Aussie Farmers Direct have developed a 3D App called “Aisle One” and have promoted it as “the world’s first virtual shopping experience”. This is the...

“Decoding the Irrational Consumer: How to commission, run and generate insights from neuromarketing research” by Darren Bridger, Marketing Science Series. This is not a book for the practical retailer looking for new ideas to grow sales. This a book if you want to look at the research behind how the consumer thinks....

Five weeks before Christmas I did some consultancy in one of my local shopping centres. Walking around one had to question what was the driver to get people to spend at this time of year. One company I looked at had a 40% off Christmas sale…in my youth sales occurred...

Whilst many of us are still trying to understand how to retail to the Millennial generation, the next generation are appearing as consumers.  Gen Z’s think differently to the generations before them. An article in WGSN stated that there are 2 billion Gen Z’s globally and they are already spending...