WINTER 2014

Win a fully stocked pallet display of Better

Lawn grass seed worth over £650.

See page 4

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We have significantly increased our spend on public relations and, as part of this package, have made a significant investment in a new social media campaign that is already gathering a strong army of followers.In addition to being on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, we also have a very popular blog. This combination not only provides the opportunity to tell gardeners about new products, current offers and breaking news but also enables us to engage directly with our valued retail trade partners.Tim Jeffries, commercial director of Mr Fothergill’s Seeds, comments: “We have already seen a great response to our new presence on social media. It provides a good platform to connect with our customers and retail partners. “In less than six months we have generated a significant level of engagement across

Johnsons’ Little Gardeners website (www.little-gardeners.co.uk) encourages children to get involved in growing and is packed with fun educational activities to help them learn along the way.The easy to navigate website features the Little Gardeners’ Academy section, which explains the science of seeds to help youngsters understand the growing process and includes fun facts about vegetables, plants and wildlife.With useful ‘Growing Guides’ and a ‘Guide to Symbols’ section on the website, children will have a head start in the garden and can begin to grow with confidence.The innovative and fun website offers a comprehensive product range specifically targeted at “little gardeners”, including

As one of the leading domestic seed houses, with the Mr Fothergill’s, Johnsons and Country Value brands, we begin the 2014 season with a programme designed to drive customers to our garden centre partners.

all the social media platforms on which we operate. We are very keen to encourage garden centres and stockists to interact with us in any way possible. Our aim is to give back to those who support us.”Tim’s appeal to garden centre owners is: “If you stock our brands, follow us online and let us know when you have an in-store promotion or any other news. We can then share your post with our followers, spreading the word to the rapidly expanding online growing community.”You can follow Mr Fothergill’s Seeds on Twitter at @mrfothergill, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/MrFothergills and on LinkedIn. You can also find the blog at http://blog.mr-fothergills.co.uk.Mr Fothergill’s Nation of Gardeners is a major social media and press campaign. Read more about this on page 4.

flower seeds, kids pots and kits plus vegetable seeds. The colourful packaging featuring funky cartoon characters is also purposely designed to appeal to children and make growing fun!

Driving customers to your garden centre

Stock up for the Little Gardeners

The Boys of the Old Brigade Chelsea Pensioners, famed throughout the world for their vivid scarlet tunics and black tricorne hats or shako caps, will benefit from Mr Fothergill’s appropriately named Victoria Cross poppy being sold to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.

The pensioners are a regular sight walking around at the equally famous Chelsea Flower Show, which is based in the grounds of the Royal Chelsea Hospital, home to the “boys of the old brigade”.

We will be donating 25p to the hospital for each packet of Victoria Cross poppy seeds sold during the four years that will mark the full centenary of The Great War.

“It is our small tribute to these famous veterans and we hope it will bring them some comfort in their retirement years,” says Dave Carey, joint Managing Director of Mr Fothergill’s Seeds.

For more information visit www.mr-fothergills.co.uk

Nasturtium Trailing Mixed Wildflower Wildlife

1 Sunflower Giant Single2. Sweet Pea Old Spice3. Wildflower Wildlife Mix4. Nasturtium Trailing Mixed5. Sweet Pea Incense Mixed6. Cosmos Sensation Mixed7. Wildflower Cornfield Mix8. Sweet Pea Bouquet Mixed9. Lupin Russell Mixed10. Wild Poppy

1 Sweet Peas – 16%2. Nasturtiums – 8.4%3. Wild flowers – 6.6%4. Sunflowers – 5.0%5. Marigolds – 3.7%6. Cosmos – 3.6%7. Stocks – 3.2%8. Poppies – 2.8%9. Cornflowers – 2.4%10. Wallflowers – 2.4%

Best-selling flower varieties (by volume sold in 2013)

Best-selling flower groups (by volume sold in 2013) plus percentage of total sales

Movers & Shakers:

Mr Fothergill’s Lawn Seed “highly rated”

Sweet Pea Old Spice Sunflower Giant Single

In our Autumn newsletter we looked at the relative popularity of groups of vegetables within our range. For this edition we are focusing on flower seeds.

With vegetables there is a large choice but relatively few groups such as carrots, tomatoes, onions etc... By contrast, flower ranges generally offer a more varied

selection. There are therefore more family groups represented by just one or two varieties than you would find in a vegetable range.

Our whole Mr. Fothergill’s vegetable range is covered by around 50 common groups but for flowers that number is over double.

There are still some very popular major groups of flowers that represent a large proportion of the sales. Based on last year’s sales about 62% of all flowers seed sold were annuals, perennials were about 24% and the rest were mixes and biennials.

The league tables to the left show the top ten best-selling single flower seed varieties and the other shows the top ten bestselling flowers groups. As you can see Sweet Peas are unquestionably the most popular flowers to grow from seed overall with three appearing in the top ten varieties.

Which? magazine recently announced its findings from a lawn seed trial that has been ongoing since 2012.

The magazine examined 22 lawn seed mixtures at regular monthly intervals from 2012 through until recently, when a special wear-and-tear machine was used on the grass to really put the lawn through its paces.

We are thrilled to announce that three of our products were featured, and all scored very well with Better Lawn coming a close second

with a score of 67% (8% above the average score).

Better Lawn, with a special blend of fine leafed ryegrass, chewings fescue and creeping red fescue, was awarded four stars in five of the nine categories including germination, fineness, appearance, shoot density and ground cover.

Our Tough Lawn seed, a value for money blend that is created for heavy wear areas, was not far behind Better Lawn with a

score of 59%. Its highest score was also for germination. The final product reviewed was the premium Ultimate Lawn which scored 52%.

In the same lawn seed trial, the magazine also assessed lawn repairs kits, in which Mr Fothergill’s Patch Repair with ryegrass was featured.

For a chance to win a fully stocked pallet display of our highly rated Better Lawn grass seed (worth over £650), turn to page 4.

For more information visit www.mr-fothergills.co.uk

Everyone here at Mr Fothergill’s would like to extend huge congratulations to Jackie Blasbery who recently competed in the Commonwealth Powerlifting Championships in Auckland, New Zealand.

Jackie, a production workflow co-ordinator for Mr Fothergill’s, came first in both of her categories – the Women’s Un Equipped and Equipped sections. Each category has a section for squat, benchpress and dead lift. In the Un Equipped section, Jackie lifted 130 kg in the squat, 82.5kg in the benchpress and 165kg in the dead lift, and in the Equipped section she lifted 152.5kg, 105kg and 180kg respectively. A fantastic achievement!

Jackie has worked at Mr Fothergill’s for nearly nine years.

We would like to wish her all the best in her future powerlifting endeavours!

The Value of Country ValueCongratulations

Jackie!

Getting to know the people behind the brand

James Maynard, supply chain planner, scheduler and analyst

As some sectors of society find it difficult to make financial ends meet, our Country Value range of seeds is an ideal bridge, offering customers quality flower and vegetable seeds at some of the most attractive prices on the UK high street.

With 149 varieties in the range and a no-quibble guarantee, this is a value brand that deserves to be on your shelves. It is a single price point range with a recommended selling price of 89p for all packets. They are not, however, price marked allowing you to sell at whatever price you feel is appropriate.

This can be your ideal price-fighting brand that will not cannibalize existing, more profitable sales of higher priced ranges. Country Value appeals to a different market.

Lower prices are achieved by maintaining a modest range with reduced seed fills and by offering Country Value as an outright sale. We do not accept returns with this range.

In the last issue we began a series of pieces that we hope will introduce you to some of the people and departments that make things happen here at Mr. Fothergill’s. Last time we spoke to Vicky Reeves, our sales administration team leader, and in this issue we turn to James Maynard, who has the grand job title of supply chain planner, scheduler and analyst.

Great job title James, but what do you do?It’s down to me and my team to use our sales forecasts, and liaise with all elements in the supply chain, to make sure we can produce what we want on time with limited waste. That includes purchasing of all items, scheduling seed packing and the packaging of any other of our goods - even if that production is not on our Kentford site.

How did you get into this role?I joined Mr. Fothergill’s almost 14 years ago as a warehouse supervisor but through a series of promotions I’ve made this role my own. I have a team of four who have various jobs that help make our production process run smoothly.

Can you let us know a little about the complexities of what you do?I guess the best way to explain is to say that we have 12,500 finished goods lines across almost 40 different branded offers for both the UK and overseas. Over the past twelve

months we have raised about 16,000 works dockets or production requests, and can pack up to 75 million packets in any year. That being said, we have the capacity to pack 180 million packets if we need to!

So what system helps you to work out this?We use an Oracle business system which helps us greatly. It copes with some 38,000 different material combinations and almost five million lines of data (every item on every order is a line of data). We run a new production plan at least once a week and it has to run overnight as it slows the whole system up - Vicky in the sales admin department would tell me off if I slowed things down during working hours!!!

When do you start the planning process for the seed ranges?Early! We started preparing for the 2014 season range in September 2012 when we looked at initial forecasts and seed deletions. Over time, the marketing teams started putting our seed collections together so that I could run my first full production plan in February 2013. We started filling packets for delivery from August 2013 with a continuous process to make sure we are never out of stock during the 2014 season. So it’s roughly an 18 month process.

So numbers are your game?They have become so and I’m quite happy with them. You also pick up lots of silly little things, like the number of elastic bands we use every year to wrap our seed packets is around 9.5m – if you laid them end to end they would stretch from here to Rome!

GROWING BRANDS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

RHS GROW YOUR OWNRHS GROW YOUR OWN

Following the overwhelming success of the 2013 Capel Manor College sweet pea growing competition, we have recently re-launched the competition ready for 2014.

The event, held on Saturday 5 July at Capel Manor College in North London, will have four categories each having a £500 prize money fund. Last year’s competition was judged by our very own Jeff Fothergill, gardening writer Peter Seabrook MBE and Principal at Capel Manor College, Dr. Steve Dowbiggin OBE.

The competition is not only to be entered by those in the nearby area. Postal entries are also accepted and we have designed an ingenious way of ensuring that entries from further afield can arrive safely using a two-litre soft drinks bottle.

More information about postal entries and

the entire competition can be found at www.mr-fothergills.co.uk.

In recognition of the continued expansion of gardeners’ interest in grow your own food, we are, for the third year, sponsoring the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) Grow Your Own campaign.

The benefits of the sponsorship will have a direct impact upon garden centres as it will raise the profile of the link between the RHS and Mr Fothergill’s.

There will be mutual links between the Society’s website (www.rhs.org.uk) and our own (www.mr-fothergills.co.uk). Our Mr Fothergill’s logo will appear on the front of seeds packets being inserted in the March edition of the RHS’s journal, The Garden.

The logo will also feature on monthly email newsletters, containing expert advice on growing your own, that will be sent to 70,000 campaign members, again featuring a link to our website.

“The RHS is Britain’s most prestigious horticultural organisation and we are delighted to be associated with it on this massively important campaign,” says Mr Fothergill’s joint managing director, John Fothergill. “Your customers who are RHS members will immediately recognise the link when they see our displays in store.”

Fascinating information is already emerging from our Nation of Gardeners campaign as the sixteen gardeners located throughout the UK plant and monitor the parcels of seeds, plants and bulbs that are sent out to them each month.Information fed back from the gardeners taking part has already resulted in planning for a detailed study of how best to sow sweet pea seeds. Some of the early results from the October delivery of the Sir Henry Cecil and Old Spice sweet peas indicated differences in germination rates following various methods of pre-treatment.

“Some of our NoGers – that is our name for the gardeners – poured boiling water over the seeds, soaked them overnight or chipped the strong outer shells. Others just planted them without doing anything,” says Ian Cross, Mr Fothergill’s retail marketing manager.

“It appears that some of these methods did speed up germination and so we have decided to conduct a proper laboratory trial in the spring. It is a terrific example of how the Nation of Gardeners is proving itself to be so valuable.”

Follow the progress of the Nation of Gardeners at the Mr Fothergill’s blog at http://blog.mr-fothergills.co.uk, or by following #nationofgardeners on Twitter.

campaign continues to be sponsored

Nation Of Gardeners drives research into sweet pea preparation

In the last newsletter we gave away a free collection of Johnsons World Botanic Seeds worth £846.50 (RRP).

We are pleased to announce that the winner is Thompsons Plant and Garden Centre in Chislehurst. Many congratulations!

To celebrate Better Lawn seed being rated so highly by Which? magazine (see page 2), we are giving away a fully stocked, pre-merchandised pallet display of our Better Lawn grass seed (500g cartons), worth over £650. Simply answer the following questions based on information found in the newsletter.

1. What is the greatest weight that Jackie Blasbery lifted in her recent New Zealand competition?

2. What is our @ name on Twitter?

3. The Capel Manor competition is for which plant?

Email all three of your answers to info@mr-fothergills.co.uk to be in with a chance of winning.

The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries.

Deadline for entries is 10th March 2014.

Last Competition winner

Sweet pea contest returns

General Enquiries: 01638 751161

Fax: 01638 554085

Email: info@mr-fothergills.co.uk

www.mr-fothergills-trade.com www.johnsons-trade.comMr Fothergill’s Seeds Ltd, Gazeley Road, Kentford, Newmarket, Suffolk CB8 7QB

Competition