Weather influences start of season  

Throughout Europe higher rainfall than normal, snow over Easter and floods covering large areas of land in the west of France and in Spain affected spring business adversely and on a considerable scale in the garden market. A dramatic slowdown in comparison with the previous year is evident right across all the markets. Hans-Rudolf Müller, chairman of the Ratingen-based IVG, an association of manufacturers of garden products, pinpointed this problem on the occasion of a trade press conference in the run-up to Gafa. The early part of the season began on a positive note, following a promising start with a satisfactory stock situation at the end of the year 2000, However, the first sales figures among the forward indicators for the motorised garden market, sales of power saws and motor tillers, remained clearly below those of the previous year. Of course, in comparison with last year power saws could by no means pick up where that early season left off, there being no storm by the name of Lothar this time round, and the use of motor tillers for working the land suffered from the wet conditions throughout Europe. Reports are coming in for the overall garden market, particularly in the modern distribution outlets in the United Kingdom, of market slowdowns of up to 50 per cent and in Germany of decreases amounting to between 25 and 45 per cent. When reference is made to the different marketing arms, it is also evident elsewhere in Europe that the specialist retailers are doing better than the large-format types. There is less of a tendency to put off the purchase of relatively expensive equipment, which when all is said and done is something that consumers plan in advance, but impulse buying is simply not happening, even in the case of aggressively priced offers. The low-budget pricing category is in a state of collapse wherever you look. One positive exception in a comparison of European markets is France, where the decreases are far less extreme and where there are still reports of stable market figures in some areas.