This may be a UK phenomenon. I'm really not sure. I call it 'Garden Centre Economics', or GCE for short.
Garden centres here do sell loads of plants and garden tools, hoses, sheds, and so on. All well and good. But they also sell the relatively mundane, for example bars of 'interesting' (i.e. different) chocolate, jars of locally produced honey, cuddly toys, and essentially lots of things that you might consider as gifts for others.
Again, nothing wrong with all this, though the notable thing is the price hikes involved. Garden centre acreage is expensive, as are the large heated halls and plush indoor carpets, so you're paying more to help keep them in business. After all, you browse their shelves and tables looking for presents and you're happy to pay more for the convenience of finding interesting gifts all in the one place.
As an example of the economics of a typical garden centre and these gifts, let's look at two examples:
- 100g bar of flavoured dark chocolate, £2.50
- 400g metal tin of chocolate chip cookies, £6
Neither are utterly outrageous on their own, but for comparison in the UK right now, supermarket prices are £1.50 and £4 respectively, say. So the garden centre mark up is around an extra 60%. Gulp.
But 60% extra is bearable if you're only buying a few items. After all, you're there anyway buying shrubs or plant pots or whatever. Garden centres don't sell huge amounts of gift items, but they do sell enough to warrant the table space.
Now fast forward to the other day, when we visited
The Savill Garden, near Windsor. Lovely area, of course, and a lovely looking restaurant (though closed when we visited), plus table after table of 'garden centre'-ish gifts and goods.
Plush it all was. Superbly presented, immaculate carpets, pristine toilets too - the poshest and cleanest I'd ever used in my life.
You can probably guess where this is going. Yes, in order to pay for all this luxury, prices of everything were hiked. And not just GCE-hiked. Not just a bit more. A lot more. Using the same example as above:
- 100g bar of flavoured dark chocolate, £4
- 400g metal tin of chocolate chip cookies, £12
This has crossed a line, I think. You see, although there were 20 or 30 other people in the centre while we were there, not a single person went up the counter to actually buy anything. Like us, they saw the prices and thought "Too much. Just too much."
Hence this article, thinking about GCE - when you hike prices to such crazy levels that people don't actually buy anything anymore, isn't that cutting off your nose to spite your face, as the saying goes? If The Savill Garden were to knock 30% off all prices then I reckon they'd sell three times as much product. Maybe more.
There's a clue above as to how the centre makes this work, mind you. The proximity to Windsor means that they probably get a decent amount of foreign tourists through their doors. Tourists who won't be familiar with the pound and how much it's worth in their own currency, or who are 'on holiday' and have allowed spending money anyway, so value for money doesn't come into the equation.
So the tourists are subsidising the plush carpets and fancy toilets. Which is handy when I'm just visiting or keeping warm on a cold day. But I couldn't bring myself to actually buy anything. Sorry. I'd welcome comment from the centre on their pricing policy, by the way.
PS. If you like this feature and want to support my work then please do so here via PayPal. Thanks.
Comments