A good year despite poor Christmas sales

Wyevale, the UK’s leading garden centre group, succeeded in increasing like-for-like sales by 2.2 per cent for the year 2002. Group sales were up by 5.6 per cent. The sales performance for the Christmas period did not come up to the company’s expectations. In the last nine weeks of the year the garden centres recorded like-for-like sales down by 0.5 per cent on the comparable period in 2001. However, business overall improved gradually during the course of the year. The first six months resulted in a 1.7 per cent like-for-like sales increase and 3.7 per cent prior to adjustment.