January 26, 2018
Jayne Scott of Daleside Klondyke Garden Centre became the 2018 Westland Rising Star winner at the Garden Centre Association (GCA) conference on Tuesday 23 January. We have since caught up with Jayne to get her thoughts on how she feels after winning and what she’s learned from the year:
How does it feel to be the winner of the Rising Star Programme 2018?
Fantastic, amazing, brilliant, overwhelming all rolled into one! But overall, after I actually started to believe it I felt extremely proud, not only to have won but to have had the full support of Klondyke throughout the programme. It has been such an amazing experience which I will never forget. The past year has taught me so much which I now implement within my own work and I hope to pass onto others within my centre.
Please can you tell us a bit about the project you implemented in your garden centre?
My first project included a full re-vamp of our landscape tunnel. Due to new plant benches that were installed last January, the access to the tunnel became very limited so my aim was to open it up completely by adding in power routes to help customer flow. I also wanted to create a garden display at the bottom which would hopefully inspire customers with ideas for their own gardens.
The second projects aim was to increase sales across 3 areas within the store, growing media, autumn lawn care and birdcare. For this I stuck to pallet size displays, making them eye catching for the customer by blocking product, adding in plenty of link sales and creating POS with helpful hints and tips.
What did you find most enjoyable about the programme?
That’s a hard question since I can honestly say that I enjoyed the whole programme from start to finish, a highlight however would be the skills I took away from each masterclass, not only from Ian Boardman but from my fellow rising stars. Seeing everyone’s enthusiasm from the skills we had learnt incorporated into each individual project was fantastic, we learnt a lot from each other throughout the whole experience.
What did you find most challenging and how did you overcome the challenges?
After doing such a large scale first project when approaching project two I struggled with how I would implement my ideas in a smaller space and in a shorter period of time. Sometimes you can tweak a display all day and still not be happy with it so I thought back to what we had learnt at Bents on masterclass 2, when we had 30 minutes to create pallet sized displays. This helped me massively since I was able to set myself a time limit and challenge myself to create some eye catching displays.
What advice would you give to future Stars entering the programme?
You will love every minute of it! At the start of the programme I didn’t really have a lot of knowledge about what we were going to do or what we would learn, but I can honestly say it has inspired me beyond words. I feel as though it has not only improved my merchandising skills but it has also improved my confidence massively. I would say the most important part of the programme is the other rising stars you meet along the way. Everyone has such brilliant ideas, which is inspiring in itself and the friendships that you form are amazing. Attending the conference with the other 4 girls was extremely special since we had formed such a nice bond and supported each other massively.
What are your future ambitions within the gardening industry?
I’m going to continue putting everything I learnt throughout the programme into practise and hopefully continue to grow my merchandising skills. I have been with Klondyke since I was 16 years old and have been fortunate enough to work my way up to my recent position of Assistant Manager at Daleside, so my next goal would be to become Manager in the future.
What do you see for the future of the garden industry in general?
I think it is going to continue to grow and flourish. It is such a wonderful industry to be part of and from attending the GCA conference this year I was inspired by how supportive the industry is of each other which is a brilliant thing to see. Having programmes such as Rising Stars gives individuals the opportunity to learn new skills which don’t only benefit themselves but also their fellow colleagues, allowing the business as a whole to constantly learn new skills and go in new directions.
