Background:

After graduating with a degree in Horticulture from the University of Bath, Andy’s career breaks down into two distinct phases. 

The first c. 18 years were spent working in industry with Sainsbury’s Homebase as the home and garden enhancement market grew rapidly, progressing to head up their Horticultural and Garden Centre Trading division. In this role Andy managed a team of c. 35 buyers and support colleagues, responsible for the central sourcing and buying for this whole category within the group, accounting for c. £250 million of profitable annual turnover. 

This period of employment provided a significant opportunity to interact with many leading industry suppliers, functionally specialist internal colleagues and world leading external advisors such as Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Mercer and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). 

For a full Curriculum Vitae for this period of employment click here

Expertise:

The key skills and experience gained during this period of employment, include:

• Significant commercial experience within the multiple retail sector, with a proven track record of sales, profit and market share growth, coupled with rigorous cost management.
• Proven ability to manage highly seasonal, perishable and weather dependent product ranges, profitably and effectively through an integrated supply chain.
• Specific expertise in the development, marketing and promotion of the horticultural and gardening offer to the consumer. 
• Strong leadership and people management skills; including selection, setting expectations, motivating and developing individuals as a team.
• Skilled and successful at cross-functional working with good communication and presentational skills, to influence at all levels within an organisation and externally.
• Extensive experience of initiating and managing change within a dynamically changing environment, to drive quantifiable business benefit.
• First-hand acquisition and merger experience with the acquisition of Texas Homecare from Ladbrokes in the 1990’s.
• Strong IT understanding and literacy, along with an awareness and appreciation of how IT supports business.

Consultancy: 

Andy Campbell Consulting was established in 2001 to offer business development advice and support to the garden centre industry throughout the UK and Ireland. The skills and experience gained whilst employed by a highly regarded, large retail business in Homebase, were expected to be in demand by independent businesses, on a freelance self-employed basis. This proved to be the case with over 200 assignments completed successfully for over 150 different clients. Andy Campbell is well respected within this specialist sector and has an enviable reputation with virtually all new business coming from word of mouth referral.

Key clients and assignments during this period have included chairing business improvement groups of small to medium sized independent garden centres on behalf of the HTA for c.18 years. Conducting annual retail standards audit inspections of medium to large independent garden centres across the UK on behalf of the GCA for c.16 years. A similar programme was also devised and managed on behalf of Bord Bia in Ireland for c.10 years. 

In addition, a vast array of one-off and ongoing projects have been undertaken with individual centres and garden centre groups ranging from family owned to private equity owned businesses. These assignments have typically covered commercial trading opportunities such as range development, sales growth and profit enhancement; operational management improvement such as space optimisation, stock reduction and implementation of policies and procedures; and business strategy development such as business turnaround, stabilisation and growth, strengthening competitive positioning and adapting to the changing garden centre market.

If you are seeking an independent, external perspective on your business need, please get in touch. Client references available on request.

Qualifications:

• Business mentor – University of Bath, Innovation Centre
• Non-Executive Director training – Imperium
• Gardening programme production support pool member – BBC
• Six Sigma Continuous Improvement Green Belt – GE Lighting Europe    
• BSc (Hons) Horticulture – University of Bath

 Associate member of Horticultural Trades Association (HTA)

   Associate member of Garden Centre Association (GCA)

Mission:

• To enable gardening industry businesses to improve profitability and compete more successfully.
• To generate greater understanding between retailers and suppliers, strengthening trading relationships.
• To ensure buyers and sellers are well trained to contribute to a balanced and robust gardening industry.

Vision:

To be universally recognised as the leading commercial business development consultant to the UK gardening industry.

Values:

• Analytical
• Challenging
• Integrity
• Openness
• Honesty
• Discretion