The Gardening Season Experienced Very Positive Performances Due to Good Weather Conditions

In 2011, the gardening season started earlier than in 2010 and experienced a very positive performance due to good weather conditions. The exceptionally dry and warm weather during March and April 2011 in particular, caused an increase across all monitored gardening categories in the German DIY Superstores – living green, garden hardware and garden furniture/- decoration. Regarding the whole assortment, DIY Superstores achieved a sound sales growth of 4.8%. Gardening categories in total had a massive impact on overall sales, with an increase of 10.9% during the first four months of the year against previous year’s period. In detail, it reveals a sales value increase in living green by 7.8%, garden furniture/ -decoration by 8.5%, and garden hardware by 16.5% compared to January - April 2010. Garden hardware sales were strongly driven by garden watering products, with items like hoses, sprinkler and pumps demonstrating a rise of over 40% in comparison to last year. Within hardware, garden tools also show a reasonably positive development in sales value, with an increase of 9.4%. Even though sales are still on an extremely low level, a new development in the German lawn mower market can now be seen; nowadays, the fully automated robot mowers are also available in DIY Superstores, not only in specialists such as motorists/ garden machinery. Garden furniture, including barbecues, has been an important sales driver in recent years and it still remains a strong trend; sales increased by 15.8% from January to April 2011 compared to the same period of last year. Both developments – a sales rise in garden furniture, including barbecues as well as the availability of robot mowers in DIY Superstores – show that living and relaxing in the garden is a highly favored leisure activity in Germany. It has the capacity to strongly boost sales not only in the specialized channels, but also in large-scale formats like DIY Superstores. Source: politics.finchannel.com