Business Acumen at The Garden Centre Association Conference

The Garden Centre Association has its winter conference at the Crowne Plaza Heythrop park near to Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire.

During the recession as people invest more in their communities the garden centres are ideally placed to provide materials for projects, so says the Horticultural Trades Association, Retail strategy action plan suggesting that centres can be community hubs.

But to be sure of hearing all the best ideas to boost garden centre businesses go along to the GCA's conference . The two days begin with a review of performance during 2011, with presentations for the Dick Allen Award, Worrall Cup, Barton Grange Trophy, Best People Award, GIMA Excellence in Garden Product Retailing Award and the Outdoor Living Award.

The conference speakers include:

Jim Gardiner the RHS Director of Horticulture

GCA E-learning initiative

Mario Dolcezza – Managing Director of Diciamo

Clare Rayner - Founder and Managing Director of Retail Acumen

Boyd Douglas-Davies and Steve Hallam from LOFA

Ian Boardman GCA Assessor

Dr David Hessayon author of expert gardening guides.

Scott Seaborn,head of mobile technologies at Ogilvy Group UK

Andrew McMillan, principal consultant at Charteris PLC

Geoff Harding, Bank of England

Motivational speaker Michael Heppell of Flip It fame

Bob Sherman, chief horticultural officer Garden Organic

Wayne Hemingway of Hemingway design

While garden centres developed from plant nurseries around the 1960s within the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) they were then able to offer some standards and quality controls. Only a decade later it became today's Garden Centre Association, in independent group that now has over 200 UK members.

» see event details

Source: Landscape Juice - Business Acumen at The Garden Centre Association Conference

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