WHAT'S IN A NAME? GM dealers getting public recognition
WITH the current carnage on the High Street, much attention is being focussed on the independent sector which now accounts for almost 70% of retail businesses.
Specialism is the name of the game.
And yet, the consumer in general is still acutely unaware of the small businesses that can serve specific needs. For many, the words small and specialist means expensive. A myth that as been disproved time and time again. Take a recent survey that found shoppers in the major supermarkets were paying through the nose for most vegetables compared with smaller shops or the markets. We all know the psychology of pricing selected key items at eye-catching prices, whilst loading the 99% of goods that are routine buys. Yet they constantly hoodwink us.
And whilst on the subject of supermarkets, that series of double page spreads that Tesco took out in the national press yesterday were one of the most embarrassing, cringing, badly-written faux-apologies in the history of faux-apologies. Tesco are now one of the elder statemen of supermarkets, not far short of world-domination (they wish), and yet to say in effect “We’ve messed up, we will do better in the future” is a stark admission that they have been misleading their customers big-time for years and years.
Anyway, back to independents.
It is my guess that if you stopped 100 people in the street and asked them to name a local garden machinery specialist, you’d get blank faces allround. Indeed, many would be surprised that there are such companies in the first place!
We still have an image problem - and I think the problem lies in the fact that just selling lawnmowers and garden machinery is too narrow a product line.
We are in fact in the business of lawncare or garden maintenance, of which machinery is just part of the solution.
It has long been a view of mine that a better description of our businesses would be as Lawncare Centres which would then encompass such essentials as grass-seed, fertiliser, irrigation and everything connected with establishing and maintaining a property-enhancing lawn and garden.
As a ‘for instance’, the Jims Mowing franchise has just struck an national arrangement with Hills, the washing-line suppliers for their operatives to dig out and install the bases for Hills products. I’m sure that there are few opportunites like that that could come our way, but in a fragmented sector, who's going to do it . .?
