It’s a fact that the outdoor landscaping area in the garden centre is sometimes allowed to languish without the detailed care and attention lavished on other product areas like giftware or food, garden care or houseplants.

It’s at the mercy of the weather and not always the first department consumers head for, which means it is sometimes allowed to become untidy and unloved.

Kelkay have made it their mission to provide centres with easy solutions to correct this problem and make sure that everyone makes the most of every sales opportunity. Their merchandising and point of sale systems are designed to put hard landscaping right at the centre of the garden retail journey and encourage garden shoppers to trade up.

It’s this change in thinking that makes it easier for retailers to maximise the sales opportunity on even the most mundane products like aggregates.

Take cobbles for example. They are an attractive addition to contemporary gardens and regularly specified in the most cutting edge designs, frequently featured in dramatic show gardens and really easy for the most inexperienced gardeners to experiment with. All retailers need to trade consumers up is the right product, inspiration and, of course opportunity. Kelkay can provide all three.

• Product - The Premium Cobble range includes classic seaside cobbles as well as dramatic pearl white and cool stylish black all of which are packed in the new premium Kelkay branded bags.

• Inspiration – The Kelkay Collections and ‘see it used’ merchandising provide an easy way to display and inspire consumers on the most effective use of cobbles in their own gardens

• Opportunity – Cobbles are part of the extensive Kelkay aggregates range and available to order for store delivery on minimum carriage paid orders of £500 or to make consumers lives even easier, for direct home delivery in bulk bags

Kelkay stockists are now able to capitalise on the added value in cobbles, encouraging consumers to trade up from a typical £5.99 or £6.99 for a regular aggregate to up to £12.99 for a bag of premium cobbles.

“It’s good for us and it great for our customers” said Alan Sheppard, Head of Sales. “We believe we’ve created the conditions which allow consumers to see the value and the benefit in spending on good quality cobbles and other aggregates. This is putting up the average spend on hard landscaping and growing the size of the category for our customers. It’s been a challenge meeting the increased demand, but it’s a problem everyone at Kelkay is very pleased to be addressing!”