If you talk to professional colleagues and market participants at the moment, you hear very little good news: the demand has collapsed; plants are not selling like expected and they are not being reordered. Of course, we are also feeling this subdued mood in the sale of young plants from Lubera Edibles. We therefore want to dig a little deeper to find out more about consumer demand. Are the consumers much less interested in berries and fruit plants than in previous years? Have they, at best, brought forward many purchases? Or are the effects we are feeling in the production and supply chain ultimately perhaps only caused internally, a kind of delayed pork cycle that is now catching up with us?
Analysis methods
Of course we do not have the means to start our own consumer surveys. But thanks to our sister company Lubera with its internet platform Lubera.com, we do have more data at our disposal that allow us to form and also test reasonable hypotheses. In our study, we also assume that people research and search online, but 95% buy onsite, in DIY stores, garden centres and food retailers. Here we have the data from Google at our disposal, which show the monthly search volumes for search terms. We used a set of about 30 search terms, each of which we examined generically, activity-based and transactionally. This sounds a bit cryptic now, but can be illustrated quite easily with an example:
- A) Raspberries, raspberry plants: generic, information-oriented search terms
- B) Plant raspberries, growing raspberries: activity-oriented search terms
- C) Buy raspberries, buying raspberry plants: transactional search terms
For A, consumers want to get information, for B they want to garden and do something and for C they are about to make a purchase. Unfortunately, we do not currently have the Google data for March, we only have figures up to February; conversely, we can see the current data from Lubera.com, which allows more precise statements about the development of spring 2023.
How big is the influence of Covid – and what effect(s) does it have?
The actual Covid peaks are seen mainly in 2020, and there especially in March, April and May. Here, demand (searches for generic, activity-oriented and transactional search terms on fruit and berry plants) has grown far beyond normal levels – with peaks up to 50% above the normal average per spring month. Here is an activity-oriented example:
Google searches for 'plant raspberries'
| Year | Number of searches |
| April 2019 | 9,150 |
| April 2020 | 16,700 |
| April 2021 | 11,100 |
| April 2022 | 9,150 |
The example is fairly typical for the development of search volumes for most of the terms studied: the year 2020 shows the largest peaks, 2021 already shows a largely normalisation, which develops somewhat further in 2022. However, the big slump in search volumes occurs from 2020 to 2021 and not from 2021 to 2022.
In general, we can probably say that in the production and marketing chain we have noticed this all about a year late. This delay is probably largely due to the processing of market data and the lagging development of production. After all, our crops come to market one to two years after the perception of the market data, due to the system. It is generally difficult to accelerate this...
Overall, we have probably returned to the normal demand – this has largely been the case on the consumer side since 2021, and we felt and perceived it in spring 2022.
What will spring be like in 2023 – according to the Google figures?
Here, too, we are hearing rather negative assessments in discussions with colleagues. At the consumer level, we are actually only seeing normality at the level of 2022 for a broad set of keywords. The deviations from the previous year are small, and sometimes go slightly up or down. The basic demand for fruit and berry plants, as shown in Google searches, is stable. As I said, however, we do not yet have the figures for March 2023.
March and first half of April – the lovely weather
In principle, I am rather cautious and mostly sceptical when looking for weather reasons for market problems. But the fact is that the influence of the weather is generally greatest in the spring. The garden platform Lubera.com has roughly the same visibility on Google from February 2023 to mid-April 2023 as in the previous year, but the number of visitors and also the sales figures are largely below the previous year: from week 6 to week 13 there is a slump of 10 to 30% below the previous year in terms of frequency. Sales have developed accordingly: in Switzerland -5%, in Germany -15% and in Austria even -20%.
Despite the still modest weather, however, spring fever now seems to be taking hold among consumers and they are no longer paying much attention to the weather: since week 14, traffic figures and also sales are clearly above last year. Austria is a mystery, clearly lagging behind Germany and Switzerland; somehow the after-effects of winter are still being felt here, but the poorer figures here cannot be fully explained.
Conclusions for production and trade
- There is currently no longer any influence that could be attributed to consumption brought forward in previous years and to Covid. At best, these effects were seen in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, they were probably not yet visible enough on the market because a strong and broad supply met a still healthy demand. However, the normalisation movement was clearly visible in the search behaviour and online actions of consumers from summer 2021 at the latest.
- There is also no general influence of the economic situation and the dwindling purchasing power. However, more attention should be paid to pricing. Here, one would do well to rather promote lack of transparency and to surprise consumers from time to time with surprising and also very favourable offers. With this strategy, higher prices (but not consistently) are also possible. We notice on Lubera.com that the weekend deals we offer (weekly bundles, always consisting of several plants, with a large discount) sell up to 50% better than in previous years.
- The demand for fruit and berry plants is stable overall. With all of the unusual weather conditions, it is at or even slightly above the level of 2019.
- With fundamentally stable demand, growth is only possible thanks to new, innovative offers tailored to consumer demand. Simply swimming along with the market (and with a one to two year delay) is no longer enough. Or to put it even more clearly: if you want to grow, you have to gain market share.
- The current tendency to concentrate on the simple and familiar, on standard products, tends to lead to a loss of market shares.
- The demand for fruit and berry offers is much more continuous during the year than the effective offer, especially in DIY stores and at food retailers. The situation is certainly somewhat better for garden centres. Nevertheless, production and trade would be well advised to select other supply windows that tend to be later, rather April and May than February and March. Summer also offers unexpected opportunities for fruit and berry plants. We will look at this in a special study in a later article.
- The systematic delay effect clearly revealed in the response to Covid is a problem especially when market movements are strong. It is our endeavour at Lubera Edibles (and in our newsletter) to also provide timely information here as far as possible.
