COMMENT FROM THE UK

By Mary Clarke, GleeWire News After hearing so many downbeat forecasts for the year ahead, it’s refreshing to speak to someone as upbeat as Garden Industry Manufacturers' Association director Neil Gow. Where most see a downturn he sees opportunity. “I see no reason for us in this industry to be anything other than optimistic, because at the end of the day the economy is almost irrelevant,” he says, batting away newspaper reports of retail gloom. We’ve caught Gow on the move, and, as he makes his way to the Harrogate Christmas Show to meet and greet suppliers and seek out products for his own garden centre, he explains that a positive attitude and an active approach is crucial in the current climate. In his opinion, no one that wants to come out on top in 2010 should be hidden in the bunkers waiting for this storm to blow over, on the contrary, they need to keep moving. Stay positive “Get out there,” he advises. “Those that are going to do well in the next 12 months are those that work for it, and I mean work for it … Those retailers that do well in 2009 will be those who have found things a little bit different, that are doing things a little bit differently. And where do you find those different things? They don’t come and find you, you’ve got to go and find them. The same goes for suppliers; the ones that will do well are the ones that go and talk to their retailers find new outlets through things like trade shows.”

While no one would call Gow’s optimism blind, there is one thing he’s quite deliberately closing his eyes to: the mass media. As far as he’s concerned, the constant stream of bad news about the economic crisis is perpetuating the problem. This is impacting the consumer at the end of the chain, who Gow says is being told by newspapers, by radio and by the government not to buy big-ticket items, as well as retailers, who he claims are being talked into a potentially dangerous reticence about buying stock. “I am concerned, and a lot of Gima members are concerned, that retailers have just not been committing because everything around them tells them that they are going to have a bad year,” he says. “I can’t really blame them, other than the fact that they listen to the press.” Abbreviated interview from GleeWire January 15, 2009

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