Andrew Burton
Worcester-based garden centre experts Malcolm Scott Consultants have kick-started 2020 with the news that it has diversified and expanded its service offering to encompass a whole range of business development, retail and visitor attraction specialisms to support its clients.
The business, which has been operation for more than 30 years, has built on its extensive planning and design experience to evolve with the marketplace, acting as an extension to the clients it supports.
Andrew Burton, who joined the business in September last year, said MSC had been working with clients to further understand their needs and to add value and expertise to their projects.
“Malcolm Scott Consultants has cemented itself over the past three decades as a tried and trusted provider of planning and design advice throughout the garden centre sector and has worked alongside operators to devise business plans to develop and expand centres.
“The garden centre business has evolved in the past few years with additional areas on top of retail and catering driving turnover. Having advised and acted as a partner to our clients in bringing a wide range of retail and restaurant offerings to fruition at centres across the country, we found that we were also increasingly being asked for insight and additional support as centres ploughed further investment into extending operations and expanding their facilities.
“As such, we began to develop our service offering in order to work alongside our clients and act as an extension to their own business. The past few months have seen us become more involved in key processes, including introducing new ranges, margin reviews, recruitment of key staff, mystery shopping and product sourcing all the way through to décor advice and strategic space planning.
“It’s an exciting diversification for us and is proving a very rewarding decision. Being able to combine years of retail, hospitality and visitor attraction insight with decades of planning and design work has created a one-stop shop for garden centres, farm shops and nurseries keen to capitalise on the thirst for a unique, non high-street visitor experience,” he said.
The business will be attending the Farma Conference on 4th March to showcase its range of services to visitors. The Malcolm Scott Consultants team will be located on stand 21, but are also available to be contacted at [email protected] or on 01905 726353
