The 'it's not just us' moment
If sales appear down during a spell of bad weather, it can be reassuring to see other businesses are too. It's also evidence to banks and investors that other businesses are in the same boat!
Sales Benchmarking
HTA Garden Retail Monitor (GRM)
The HTA Garden Retail Monitor (GRM) is an online platform allowing HTA member retailers to benchmark their sales performance against regional and national averages. Sales data is securely, automatically uploaded via the garden centre's EPOS system, where it populates reports for comparing performance. Sales can be analysed by product category or specific time frames and you can choose from metrics like gross profit, average transaction value (ATV) and more.
We also have a non-EPOS manual entry version of the GRM, which is currently primarily used by the Business Improvement Scheme (BIS) and Retail Development Forum (RDF) groups. Please contact grm@hta.org.uk if you're a new BIS/RDF member and need help with submitting your sales figures.
What are the benefits?
Identify areas of strength, weakness or opportunity
See where your business is strong or weak compared to national/regional averages and identify issues or opportunities to address. For example, seeing your Average Transaction Value for Catering is low for your region, could highlight reason to try and cross-sell or increase margin.
Supporting industry's interests
The HTA uses the aggregated data to provide evidence for our arguments when influencing goverment policy, demonstrating the position for our members. The data also forms a core part of our monthly Market Update reports that keep our members up to date on factors affecting state of trade!
Promoting gardening to the public
The HTA uses the aggregated data to generate media coverage for the industry by reporting and responding to media requests for statistics.
How does it work?
We match each garden centre's department hierarchy with GRM and GCA product categories to provide like-for-like benchmarking.Sales data is then automatically transferred on a weekly basis via the EPOS system and populates the reports.
We do all the setup and talk to your EPOS provider, we just need your department structure and a few details about your business.
What reports are available?
- Sales Performance Benchmark Report - your total sales performance
- Category Performance Benchmark Report - product category performance, choosing from the HTA, GCA or your own categories
- Member Operating Metrics ATV Report - your Average Transaction Value performance for the current year and previous two years
- Member Business Report - a summary of business growth/decline from the present month and previous 3 years
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
No. Your data is encrypted and held in a secure server and only your business can see your store specific figures. The T's & C's also mean the HTA can only use data for analysis purposes at aggregate level.
No. If you're willing to submit data you can access the benchmarking reports as part of your HTA membership!
Unfortunately, yes. But we do have an older system where you can manually type your sales figures in each month. If you'd be interested in using that, please let us know!
Your EPOS provider needs to do a small amount of work to enable data transfer, which we can arrange for you. The following EPOS providers are already compatible with the GRM: Corby & Fellas, Swan Retail, NedFox and Open Retail Solutions. If yours isn't on the list, let us and them know you're interested in signing up and we can arrange a chat!
Interested in signing up?
Fill out the short registration form below and we'll be in touch!
Horticulture House
Chilton
Didcot
Oxfordshire
OX11 ORN
Get in touch
Contact the Garden Retail Monitor team
Horticulture House
Chilton
Didcot
Oxfordshire
OX11 0RN