How's the season gone? Here’s some figures for you. Sales of power mowers (excluding riders) were 1.45m for the year, down considerably on the previous year (1.75m) –and even the year before that (1.58m). Total value of the power mower market was £130m, with a split of 85% electric and 15% petrol.
82% were replacement purchases, 18% a first-time buy. The sales mix was 40% hover mowers, 36% wheeled rotaries and 24% cylinder.
35% of UK gardens were less than 38 sq yards, whilst only 10% were over 300 sq yards (tennis court size).
OK, by now you have probably twigged that we are not talking about 2015.
No, the figures refer to 1989, and were issued by Flymo as part their annual Power Mower Market Statistics series. It was at a time when Flymo were hotly contesting market share figures with arch-rivals Qualcast. And crucially they were happy to share their data with the trade and the press (for altruistic reasons no doubt).
How useful that would be today for the industry as whole to know the size of the market year-on-year? Trends, market splits, value, buying patterns- and so on. What percentage of the power mower or power tool market is now cordless? Exactly how many robotic mowers were sold in the UK last year (forget meaningless comparisons with Sweden)?
Even back then, Flymo were highly critical of the ‘official’ figures issued by the British Lawnmowers Manufacturers Federation (BLMF) who had agreed to issue composite figures from their members of shipments to dealers. They argued that they did not reflect retail sales, nor did they include imports.
Today, if it had still existed, the BLMF could have held its AGM in a phone box – and still have room for a crate of beer. That total figure of 1.45 million for 1989 included imports of 124,000. According to recent figures issued by the AEA, imports of lawnmowers into the UK totalled just over 1.4m units for the first six months of 2015! (1.2m of those from China).
In 1989, China was in the midst of internal strife. It was the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Making lawnmowers was furthest from their mind. Twenty five years on, they are the powerhouse of our industry.
So, the data is there as far as imports are concerned (and probably more accurate than data from the BMLF), the missing ingredient is consumer sales. Again, Flymo were open to sharing sales data from retail audit organisations such as GfK which also factored in a cross section of independents with the big-box stores).
Now, internet sales have to be added, but the point is that the data is there. Wouldn’t it be a real service to the industry as a whole for organisations such as AEA, BAGMA or whoever to combine and analyse what data is available, perhaps talk to a retail analysis company, set up a representative panel of independents to provide sales data so that we have an authoritative indicator of market size year-on-year?
One which the whole industry can use as a benchmark. Market share is irrelevant, what's needed is data on which it can rely, contrast and compare. Compared with 1989, we are in the dark ages about the size and shape of the market.
