“After all, we’re only here for the customers”

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The Dutch speciality chain Ranzijn opened its first garden centre 20 years ago. Now the company has eight outlets focusing on the pet and garden product categories.
When you’re passing Alkmaar via the Ostring, you can't miss Ranzijn’s biggest store and headquarters. Even the official road signs show the way to it. On entering the store, it’s immediately apparent that the main ranges, garden and pet, are presented in a very well-organised manner. Everything also appears very modern, even though this first store is already twenty years old. Before he established the Ranzijn chain, company founder Jan Ranzijn ran a feed business. He later added plants to the range at the request of his customers. “In 1987 he took over the garden centre in Alkmaar, and one outlet eventually turned into an organisation currently comprising eight stores,” recounts director Wilfried van den Broek.
Orientation to supermarket concept
Ranzijn is geared to the current concepts of supermarket chains. The proximity effect is important: customers visit the pet department and then also buy garden products. “We are a chain store company and can position ourselves optimally in the market. We react flexibly without losing sight of our strengths as a local supplier. Where possible, we centralise certain areas.”
Plants and the pet sector account for 70 per cent of overall sales. The remaining 30 per cent is made up of accessories such as plant pots, garden tools and fertilizers. Wilfried van den Broek says: “We even have an extended range of barbecues, while on the garden furniture side we concentrate only on highlights. We prioritise products with a high circulation velocity. We’re actually the supermarket among the garden centres, offering homogeneous quality at a low price. The more our customers buy, the cheaper it is for them. If a customer buys a tray of twelve tins of pet food, for instance, he only pays for ten. And we ensure that there’s always something going on here. Promotions always bring in additional sales.”
Strategies and concepts
Ranzijn recently also introduced a private label brand, whereas it previously positioned itself exclusively with A-brands at low prices. The motto when it comes to private label policy is “offering at least the same quality at lower prices”. Another factor that is important to Wilfried van den Broek is that employees have the optimum level of expert knowledge. “We differentiate between…