Preview — the reference figures in this tool are placeholders, not yet the real lookINsight benchmark.
Free · no account · nothing leaves your browser
Your square metres, on the European curve.
Six numbers is all it takes. Enter your surface and turnover (in total and for three departments) and see instantly where your euro per m² sits against European garden centres.
Compared with 54 European locations from 8 independent operators — out of 132 whose data we have analysed
30 product groups — the H-group taxonomy, counted the same way in every country
Calculated in your browser — your figures are never sent to us or stored
Gives you your position. What it means for your mix, your pricing and your floor plan is the work we do together.
Position, not interpretation
This tells you where you stand. It does not tell you what to do.
A position on a curve is a starting point, not a decision. Deliberately outside this free tool — because it needs your real data, your market and a conversation:
Why a department sits where it sits — assortment, location in the store, season, staffing or pricing
Margin per m², not just turnover per m² — the department that looks strong and earns least
What your catchment can actually carry, so you compare with the right peers instead of the European average
Which square metres to move, shrink or grow, and what that is worth
Next step · your own data
The Data & Department Scan
Your full till data against the European set — every department, turnover and margin per m², floorplan heatmap, and one clear recommendation. Fixed scope, delivered in weeks, no obligation to continue.
Reach, population, purchasing power, housing structure and competition, benchmarked against 112 European reference locations. The Compact Version: all the hard numbers, delivered in 10 working days.
Every location in the set is measured this way, and the tool asks you for exactly the same thing. Comparing differently measured floors is worse than not comparing at all.
Count the whole selling area — indoor, the outdoor area, and the restaurant. If a customer can walk in and buy there, it counts.
Leave out offices and the warehouse. Space that never sells is not floor a department has to earn back.
Aisles are split 50/50 between the two product groups on either side. A group carries its share of the space it needs to be reachable.
Per group, count the floor it actually occupies, including that share of the aisles around it, so the group m² of a store add up to its total selling area.
A zone plan from one of our own projects. Every colour is a product group, the whole selling area is covered including the outdoor area, and each zone carries its own m². This is what "count it once, properly" looks like.Open the plan full size →
In our own projects this is done once on the floor plan: the plan is zoned, and every square metre in it belongs to one group or is split between two. If your own figures are measured differently, the comparison will be off — usually by more than the differences you are looking for.
How the benchmark is built
Honest about what it is, and what it isn't.
Comparing garden centres only works if everyone is measured the same way. This is how we do it, and where the limits are.
One taxonomy: the H-groups
Every location is mapped onto the same 30 H-groups before anything is compared. Without that, "garden furniture" in one centre is "outdoor living" in another and the numbers mean nothing. The full taxonomy is published below.
Medians, not averages
We report the median and the quartiles. One giant centre cannot pull the reference up, and your position is expressed as where you sit in the spread, not as a single "target" figure.
Small samples stay visible
Every line shows its n. Where a country has too few locations to stand on its own, you are compared with the full European set and the tool says so — rather than quietly pretending to a precision it doesn't have.
Anonymised aggregates only
The reference set holds five points per distribution — no records, no names, no single centre that can be reconstructed. Individual client data never leaves the project it belongs to.
Turnover per m², not margin
The free tool compares turnover per m². Margin per m² — often the more uncomfortable number — is part of the Data & Department Scan, because it needs your real purchase data.
Updated with every project
Data from 132 locations in 11 countries has been through our analysis. 54 of them meet the standard for the whole-store comparison, and 22 report every product group separately. We publish all three numbers rather than the flattering one. Edition: —.
The taxonomy · open to use
The H-groups: one language for garden centre floor space.
Comparing centres only works if everyone counts the same things. These are the product groups every location in the benchmark is mapped onto. Use them, cite them, map your own reporting to them — that is the point of publishing a standard.
What we publish is the standard, not the table behind it. Compare three groups at a time in the tool above — that is the free service. The complete picture across every group, with margin per m² and what it means for your floor, is the Data & Department Scan.
Gaps in the numbering (H02, H04, H05, H08) are groups that were merged into their neighbours as the taxonomy matured. The numbers are kept stable on purpose — a code that changes meaning is worse than a gap.
We refresh the European figures as the set grows. Leave your address and we'll send the update — plus the occasional insight on square metres and concepts. No noise.
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