AMES UK is reporting an uplift on 2018 of over 46% on a like-for-like basis across Kelkay, Woodshaw and La Hacienda.

Richard Pyrah, grpoup sales director at AMES UK, commented: “We enjoyed our best ever GLEE in September, with significant sales and order growth coming from our core garden centre customers. Certainly, the new product ranges contributed, but the most satisfying trend is the strong growth in our core categories from our loyal customers.”

Pyrah's focus for the next few weeks is in the customer service arena, where he believes there are opportunities to adopt some best practices from the different teams within the AMES UK group. They’re starting with operational improvements in the way that bespoke point of sale design and print is delivered to garden centres. The aim is to provide a more flexible approach and to improve on speed and efficiency in response to individual garden centre needs.

The business is also embarking on a programme of insight work into core landscape categories and the results of feedback from garden centres will help to shape its future developments.

“We want to understand how our customers see the future of the category and the successful development of the business over the coming years," he said. "That’s why we will be focussing on the views and experiences of our garden centre customers in a structured programme of insight research in early 2020. I’m really looking forward to working with our customers on the next phase of our development.”