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Bad Weather is Poor for Business - Philip Voice
- 24 April 2013
The prolonged winter cost UK businesses £174m says the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). I bet that's just the tip of it. The garden industry is taking blow after blow when it comes to the weather with many businesses so far behind there's not a snowball in hells chance of retrieving lost income or catching up; what's gone is gone.
Unless we can achieve a good long summer I fear there will be no way back for many.
It's not just one-man-bands either. An SME with 2-6 employees will find it just as tough paying wages and absorbing costs during extended periods of poor weather.
An elastic band can only stretch so far.
Forgotten industry
I don't know how the FSB compile its figures but I'd be very surprised if they include horticulture related businesses.
With no single organisation representing the needs of the landscape and horticulture industry it's almost certain that its members have not been polled to determine how much money and business has been lost throughout the winter.
Landscaping really is a forgotten industry.
Year after year
If the winter of 2012/13 had been a one-off I guess we wouldn't be getting too bothered. But it's not. It seems the last 3-4 years have thrown some exceptional circumstances at those working in the garden industry.
How have you faired? Will you be able to recoup your losses or do you just write them off?
After starting my garden maintenance and landscaping business in 1984 and running it for 21 years I decided I needed a change of direction (probably a mid life crisis, no seriously! :-0) Together with my family, wife Donna, Son Henry and Daughter Fleur (not forgetting Hector the Black Labrador) I moved to France in search of an old farmhouse to renovate. In the interim period whilst waiting for the contract to go through I started writing a blog. Initially just to keep a diary for family and friends to keep up with our progress if they wished but then it occurred to me that there isn't a real time watcher of the landscape industry in the UK. I didn't want to waste my experience and experiences so I decided I could put all of this Juice to good use so I started Landscape Juice.
Source: Landscape Juice - Bad Weather is Poor for Business - Philip Voice
