“We couldn’t resist”

More and more countries, more and more increasingly precise data, more and more additional information - that's probably the best way to describe the development of Statistics Home Improvement Retail Europe. This publication has been providing the international DIY industry with reliable numerical data on the current state of affairs on the European market for more than twenty years.
"The 'more and more' thing - we couldn't resist this year either", says Anne Plein-Alt, statistic expert at the Dähne Verlag publishing house, and Rainer Strnad who, as managing editor of the trade journal DIY International, is in charge of publication of the annual statistical standard work in the international DIY industry.
"One topic has always been close to our hearts: now, at last, there is a separate chapter on the topic of the garden market in Europe," announce the industry experts for the expanded publication. Even though it is an established market, researching the data is extremely difficult, as the market is much more fragmented and is characterised by many more, but a lot smaller players (who hold back their figures much more).
However, the new edition can still offer readers who are particularly interested in the garden market a particular highlight in this edition: over a full fold-out page we can present the activities of 50 garden centre operators in 16 countries. "We are self-critical enough to know that this does not offer the complete picture," say the authors. "But we are also self-confident enough to know: this data will be of great interest to many readers."

This is precisely the attitude with which they have also treated the second newly introduced topic, which is also no longer quite new, but also very up-to-date: e-commerce is a reality in home improvement retailing, and it was high time to finally present this segment in more detail.
The difficulties in getting sensible and, above all, comparable data here are much greater than in the case of the garden market. But here too, the publishers present the data both self-critically as well as self-confidently. Because even if this statistics volume cannot (yet) fully reflect the online market: the readers and users of a statistics volume about the international DIY industry…