Three times the green expertise

Four months ago in Aarschot, the Garden Centre Holding put the first pilot store of its further developed sales concept Oh'Green into the running. Three months after the opening of the first pilot store, CEO Bob Douliez takes stock while looking to the future.The Garden Center Holding is the result of a fusion which three investors have driven: the Hubo group - the number 2 in the Belgian DIY market - and the investment fonds Pentahold and E-Capital. Hubo and Pentahold each hold 40 per cent of the shares. The pilot project in Aarschot provided the opportunity to completely reposition the concept and ultimately to also introduce a new logo: Oh!Green (with exclamation mark) is now Oh'Green.

The Belgian garden centre market with almost 600 independent outlets has been going through a remarkable transformation for almost a decade, which has been moving it more towards retail trade. The first wave was triggered in 2008 by the involvement of two investment companies, namely Pentahold and E-Capital, and subsequently through the takeover of five garden centres in 2015, which belonged to the Hubert family (Hobby Garden, Goldie, Superjardin, Vive mon Jardin and Coin Vert). In 2011 the joint venture led to the introduction of the brand Oh!Green with annual sales of around EUR 28 mio.Hubo brought the second wave into the arena in 2012 with the takeover of the nine Walter Van Gastel garden centres (annual sales EUR 23 mio) and three garden centres from the Dutch Intratuin group (EUR 18.5 mio) in 2015.Finally, the third wave last year, with the fusion of Garden Vision (five Oh!Green locations) with the Hubo garden centres, ultimately brings Garden Center Holding onto the scene with a total of twelve outlets and sales of almost EUR 70 mio. The opening of the pilot store opens up new perspectives for a market which had remained apathetic for far too long.

Bob Douliez (52), a real swashbuckler of retail trade - he has been on the management board of Ikea and the furnishings store Casa International - came to Garden Center Holding in 2015. Together with Erwin Van Osta, the CEO of the Hubo Group (annual sales EUR 650 mio), he was supposed to write a concept, the likes of which there had never been before in the Belgian garden centre industry.He formulates his order like this: "Our ambition was to create a garden centre that optimally met customers' expectations. The ideal garden centre concept brings together four…