2021 saw waves of new DIY and gardening novices join, creating the biggest reason for growth optimism in more than a decade. These younger and more ethically motivated shoppers are part of a larger shift in behaviour driving change to product and store strategies, as brands and retailers pivot towards retention and mentoring the skills of these creative and highly engaged consumers. Home services remain overloaded, driving new novices into the shops, and becoming more attractive for integration.
This report comes in PPT.
This group represents a growth in the total size of the prize for home improvement, resetting Millennial stereotypes over DIY/DIFM usage that are badly out of touch, while changing the demographics for the largest product target audience. This requires a rethink of product, sales, store, technology and communications strategies, and high degrees of effort are visible across multiple continents as retailers and brands begin to cater to this group and build their growth strategies contingent on retaining these shoppers in the DIY sector.
One of Euromonitor International’s Top 10 global consumer trends for 2022 is Rural Urbanites, a group of consumers who cannot escape the city, but who want to bring a touch of healthy rural living into their smaller living spaces. Within wider strong global growth in gardening, the indoor plant trend stands out as the strongest growth driver in urban spaces, alongside growing media and pots and planters which marks the other major sales driver of grow-your-own for vegetables and fruit. These new gardeners are far more motivated by ethics.
In countries where the home services skilled workforce could absorb this scale of demand, the gardening and home improvement boom manifested mainly for services and trade products. In countries where that skilled labour resource was more scarce, enormous waiting lists ensued, pushing clients into DIY and gardening retailer stores and websites in great numbers. This revenue growth makes services more attractive; the waiting lists make controlling installation services business critical for a stakeholder wanting to sell new kitchens/bathrooms.
Phygital is fast replacing omnichannel as the buzzword for e-commerce. The role of the store is being fully questioned, which will impact where stores need to be, how big they need to be, what training is needed to staff them, and what technology will be suitable to meet their evolving mission as fulfilment, engagement and experience hubs, chasing after shopper footfall and attention. Meanwhile, e-commerce is getting overhauled with investments beyond the basics of emergency fulfilment, addressing experience shortfalls pre and post sale.
There are three pillars to sustainable policy making: 1) Decarbonisation is moving with climate neutral or positive targets, but few are meeting these goals; 2) Circularity is visible in packaging policy and early stages for product design, and the most promising re-use trend is only now getting started; and 3) Environmental, Social and Governance include causes that are rising around organic and natural messaging. Studying other sectors further into this journey (including Home Care, which is the closest in proximity) can reveal further steps to take.
This project has a strict focus on sales to consumers only. Trade and professional sales are excluded. Home and garden refers to gardening, home improvement, homewares and home furnishings.
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