So welcome back to another of our GLEE focussed episodes of The Underground. This week, we're delighted to welcome Trevor Pfeiffer, the editor and director of Garden Trade News. He's also managing GTN Xtra, GTN bestsellers, Garden Radio, The Greatest Awards, the Official GLEE Publications, Pet Trade Xtra and SOLEX Sun. Wow, that's a lot to fit in. Welcome, Trevor.

Morning, everybody.

Morning, Trevor. I'm exhausted just listening to that. So, Trevor, you've been working in the garden sector for a long time. Have you always been on the journalistic side of things? And perhaps you can give us a bit of background to yourself?

Well, actually, I started off in newspaper publishing, selling advertising and sold advertising for many years on magazines such as Motorcycle News. Until I all of a sudden became a junior publisher at Emap. And one of the first titles I published back in 1989 was Garden Trade News. And I've subsequently been involved in gardening publishing ever since. In one way or another. I didn't publish Garden Trade News all the way through, but, I was involved in it, and I was involved in the RHS magazine, The Garden. Running that for the RHS for many years. Garden News, Practical Gardening as it was, Garden Answers Magazine. And so stuck with that. And then in 2002, I set up my own business and we started, created a radio station called Garden Radio, which plays in garden centres. Plays in about 100 garden centres across the UK currently. And around that time we wanted to set up a trade magazine publishing for garden centres in the garden industry and after licensing Garden Trade News for a couple of years, we ended up buying it from them because it was then sitting alongside GLEE and all of their exhibitions as opposed to in the publishing arm. So we took it on and so we did it since about 2004, and then added the email newsletter service GTN Xtra in about 2008. When my team said, no, no, we can never do weekly publishing. There's not enough news and it's now it's a struggle to fit everything in weekly. And in terms of journalism, it wasn't until I started running my own company that I was allowed to become a bit of a journalist. Photographer. And eventually I ended up taking over the reins of editing duty myself, during Covid, and it's stuck ever since. But I can't do it all, I don't do it all myself. You know, I have a team of people. You can't produce the amount of stuff we produce. You know, I need a team of people who are great and a whole host of freelancers as well.

Wonderful. So, how on earth did you transition from motorcycle magazines to gardening? What piqued your interest there?

Well, it wasn't so much a case of piqued my interest at the time. It was a question of having to. Because when you became a junior publisher at Emap, you published whatever magazines you were given the chance to publish. And that was some motorcycle magazines, some gardening magazines and a couple of railway magazines, actually, Steam Railway and Rail Enthusiast magazine. So you learn your ropes from those. But then somehow I managed to become just the publisher of all the gardening magazines at Emap and, that's when the gardening publishing bug really bit because, I realise it's not a bad industry to be involved in because plants grow and plants die and grass grows every year. And there’s a sustainability about the industry.

Absolutely, it's always going to be there.

It's always going to be there. So, you know, it's kind of stuck and, yeah. And I'm really glad I've been involved in it all this year. I couldn't think of a better industry to be involved in, in terms of the people that you meet.

That's what so many of our guests have said. People just can't leave. It mainly is yeah, mainly it's the people, isn't it? Definitely. So, tell us a little bit how GTN works, if that's okay.

Well, GTN is a monthly magazine. I'll say monthly occasionally it's bi monthly, depending on what's happening. And that’s print. And our intention with GTN is that all of the content in the magazine, in the printed magazine, is original content that we go out and source. If we get any press releases, we put those in our digital newsletter, which is email, which is GTN Xtra, that gets sent out at least once a week, because it gets updated if anything happens. I believe in pushing news out to people rather than relying on them waiting to come to find the news. And I see that seems to work very well. And that's how. And then in the background we do something called GTN Bestsellers, which we haven't published for just over a year, because we're moving it from being print to digital, but we collect and analyse data from a number of garden centres. And we’ve been doing that now for over about 15 years actually now. So we can spot some trends and GTN bestsellers, when we first launched it at GLEE, and I'm sorry, but I can't remember which year it was, but we were the people that highlighted the fact that orchid drip feeders were a number one best selling product. And at the time everybody said, no, no, no, they can't. But the statistics didn't lie. And they were, in terms of volume sales, they were only 99p, but they were a volume best selling line. And indeed there was only one manufacturer of them. But the number of the people who said no, no, they can't be bestsellers subsequently produced their own version of them. So we can chart, through our best sellers data, we charted the rise of the sale of soda lights and garden centres. You know, you can tell when people are buying and growing tomatoes because of the peak in Tomorite sales.

Yes. So it's essential data really for garden centres, isn't it?

Absolutely. Our whole remit of everything we do is that it has to be useful for garden centre professionals. And if we're not producing material that's useful, then what are we here for, you know, and we're here to help the trade and we tend not to publish speculation because it doesn't help anybody. You know, if I hear and I do hear of lots of garden centres, lots of deals being done, potential deals being done, I won't publish it until I'm absolutely certain that the staff involved in those businesses know that the deal is being done. Because it's their livelihoods at stake, you know?

Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Good.

So that's what we're about.

Yeah. Well, I get the newsletter every week or two weeks so I can attest.

I’ll have to add you to the list for the magazine as well.

Oh yes. Please do.

But you can, interestingly, you can read the magazine online now because we publish it on issue.com. And, we get increasingly more and more readership of it online. It's never going to take over from print. I think there is something, you know, I can remember people forecasting when, digital publishing came along, that print would die. I don't think it ever will. You just have to find the right niche for it. And I think that's, I hope that's what we've done with the magazine. You know, it's got to have original content. It's no good filling it with, if you fill it with press releases, well, you can read the press releases anywhere, but we want stuff, useful content that people are going to read and digest and do something with. Because the other thing we do is we do, as much as we can. We do awards for the industry, and the one we do most regularly is the greatest Christmas awards, mainly because garden centres really want to win those Christmas awards. They put so much effort into it. But, you know, doing that, that means we go out and visit 100 garden centres in the run up to Christmas every year and photograph them and check that they are actually the greatest garden centre Christmas team. So it's just about being out there and reporting back and passing on that information.

And it keeps things going during the winter when it's a little bit quieter as well.

Yeah, but you say quieter. Not for garden centres.

Not anymore.

I see that busiest weeks of the year are the two weeks, the two peak weeks at the end of November, beginning December, in the run up to Christmas. And unless it snows, those are forecastable peaks that garden centres can work on. Whereas the spring peaks, and they didn’t happen at all this year, move around with the weather left, right and centre.

That's true. That's very true.

Garden centres, and it was interesting because it was one of the debates about the timing of GLEE. I remember pre the decision to move to June, part of the impetus for that move was that garden centres were saying that it's really difficult for them to get along to GLEE in September because they're so busy setting up Christmas. Okay, it’s been proved that June was too early and not right for the whole of the industry, but, you know, come off the August Bank holiday, garden centres are already pricing all of their Christmas stock that's arriving in in the back office and getting the displays ready. And there will be a garden centre in Essex called Summer Hill that will be opening it's Christmas on August bank holiday Monday. Because they do every year. And every garden centre in the world will have customers that complain about Christmas coming out. But, as soon as they put Christmas cards out on sale, people start buying them.

So, a quick question for you then, Trevor. So you're saying how much you’re enjoying being in the industry and how friendly everything is? There are a few publications in the garden industry, and I'm just wondering what the competition's like between the different publications.

How do you mean, in terms of competition?

Just, you know, is there a friendly rivalry between you? Do you see yourselves as colleagues?

Oh I think there’s a friendly rivalry, I love getting a story out before my competition. I like to be first to break the news. Thank you. That's what we’re about. And our business is funded purely by advertising revenues, on the magazine publishing side. And we can only sustain those ad revenues if people are reading the publications and responding to advertising. So, yes, it's going to be competitive because we want to be there. We want to be the people that people are reading first and most. And I like to think we are amongst, if not the most respected and probably actually if you get statistics that were reliable across the industry, I'd like to think we were the most read across the garden retailing sector, not necessarily the whole of the industry because we don't get involved in landscaping. We don't get involved in commercial growing. You know, we are focussed on garden centre retailing. GTN was launched in 1978, a few years after GLEE started. So we've been going 40, 47 years. GTN has.

Yeah, it's a long time.

And it's interesting because I was looking through, I happened to be doing some research through some old issues of GTN last night for some stuff I'm doing for the GLEE 50 year heroes campaign that GLEE are running, and the new products display at GLEE, in all the issues I was looking at, there's always a comment about the fact there's between 300 and 350 products on display at GLEE, even back in the 90s. So it's not a recent phenomenon that the new product area is that. And it's interesting because I go to quite a few trade shows, and I've got a sneaking suspicion that the GLEE new product display is probably the biggest of most trade shows. It's, you know, it's quite incredible, actually. How it works.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you bring that up because, I wanted to talk to you. I gather that GTN are actually involved in organising the new product awards at Glee. Is that something you've been involved in in the past? And can you tell us a bit about how those awards work?

We've been, I've been involved as a judge in the GLEE new product awards many years ago. Then for about the last eight years, we've actually been involved in organising it for GLEE. And that involves arranging the display, getting all the new products in, arranging the judging. And then the awards at the end of the day, and we promote it obviously through GTN, make sure to encourage exhibitors to put their entries in. And we know from experience that it's one of the first places that a lot of people go to when they arrive at GLEE on the Tuesday morning.

Right. Well, if you if you listen to our previous episode with our GLEE tips, Boyd Douglas-Davis said that as one of his best tips, head straight for the new products.

Absolutely.

And actually, we've had quite a few comments on LinkedIn, people saying that as well. That's the first thing they do, go straight to the new products.

Really good. So am I right in thinking that as part of the awards, it involves like doing a pitch a bit like Dragon's Den?

Yes. So when we first got involved, the process was literally just that the judges judged the area, they gave a score, we selected the winner, and we presented those awards at the end of the day. But one of the judges, and it was actually, a buyer from Homebase, whose name I sadly can't remember at the time said, there's a problem with this process. We don't actually get to talk to the the owners of the product, to actually interrogate them to find out whether it should win or not. And I took that idea on board. And so we came up with this idea of getting the judges to select the top three in each category and then inviting the top three to come along, pitch to us, and to start off with, we did that in a little room off to the side of Glee, because we weren't sure whether people would want to do it or how it would go. But it was really interesting because, it enabled the judges to change decisions if they needed to. If they thought something, on looking at it, was good, but maybe there was something else that was better in the top three. They could change their decision. And then we did that in the back office for a few years. And then one year we decided actually, let's do it on the new products stand. And that then started to gather a crowd and people seemed to get used to the idea of pitching. So it's now a feature on the stage. And we've changed, this year we're doing the preliminary judging on the Monday night, while the shows finish off being built for two reasons. One, so that we can get all the pitching done the next day, but also, so that then the judges are not in the way when people rush into the show on the Tuesday morning. And also, conversely, from my point of view, trying to get judges to judge when there’s visitors in the way slows the process down. So, I'm quite happy with that. And then from 9:30 on Tuesday morning on the stage, there'll be a succession of exhibitors pitching their products to the judges, for them to make final decisions later in the afternoon. And then at 5:00, we'll be presenting the awards. This year, there’s 13 categories, plus, three overarching awards.

When you say overarching, is that kind of Best in show kind of thing?

Yeah, the overarching awards are Best of British, GLEE Sustainability Award, and then the overarching GLEE New Product Award.

Right. So what are the different criteria that the products are judged on that you're looking for?

Well, the judges are looking for newness, and innovation and ultimately something ideally, hopefully, that's going to sell in garden centres. You know, in the past we have had some products win GLEE new product awards that were great, but just never sold.

There's a product called the Garden Groom. It was one of the most famous ones to win that GLEE new product award. It was like a vacuum cleaner for hedge cutting. I will publish a photograph of it actually. I found in the archives. But it just never caught on, just didn't work in reality, and that's the trick with these products. But the reason there's 300, over 300 new products entered is because each exhibitor can enter up to three products in each category. And the difficulty with gardening is, you know, we're not a hugely innovative industry, but there is lots of newness coming through. You know, it may be that somebody spotted a trend, a consumer trend, and they've applied that trend to a product. And so therefore there's a new twist on a product that’s entered. And that might win if it is something that is new and going to sell as a result of that newness, you know, but hopefully we're looking for completely brand new products if we can.

So it's not kind of, angled towards the big the big boys that were always going to win. You're looking at the tiny company with a great idea too.

Absolutely, absolutely. And the challenge then for the tiny company that wins is how can they maximise the opportunity. You know, can they gear up production to meet demand. Because if their idea is that good enough and somebody, you know, one of the big buying chains or groups comes in and wants it, they’re going to need to supply a lot of product.

Of course. So, Trevor, you said you were a judge. Are you still one of the judges? And who makes up the judging panel?

I am the corraller of the judges. My head judge is a gentleman called Ian Hodgson, who's the editor-at-large at Garden News. And Ian is particularly good, has particularly long gardening and journalistic heritage. And he asks the best questions.

And my other judges are made up of a panel, primarily of people who either are currently or were working in garden retailing. And I try and get, and I've been able to get some consistency to the judging panel over the last few years because that's kind of useful when it comes to whittling out the wheat from the chaff. And making sure that you don't get a product that was entered a couple of years ago coming back in and winning again. So that's quite useful. And I always make sure I've got at least two members of the YPHA involved in the judging. So it's not just an oldies view of the industry, but a young person's view of products and innovation as well.

That's great. That's great to hear.

Yeah. So that's probably really useful for spotting trends and stuff as well isn’t it, you know, because they will potentially be more aware of things which may be kicking off on some of the social channels and that sort of thing.

Exactly. Yes. Yeah. But then the oldies are really good at spotting things that have been launched as new, but aren’t really new.

Yeah. Seen that before.

That's very naughty. I can't believe the garden trade would be like that. So do you get on as a judging panel? Do you have some serious disagreements? How do you make that final choice? Does it have to be unanimous?

The final choice has to be unanimous. So there's a bit of cajoling that goes in, but it generally is actually. The process has worked for the last eight years. You know, we tend to have good winners, appropriate winners. It is then down to the winners to actually make the most of the opportunity.

So if any of our listeners are actually exhibiting at GLEE this year, is it still possible for them to get involved in the new product awards?

Oh, absolutely. Every exhibitor can do it. All they need to do is go into the GLEE exhibitor zone, fill in the form, and they can enter up to three products in each category. And it is so worthwhile doing. If you've got something that's new, make sure it's on display on the new product display area. Because we get feedback from so many exhibitors saying that they got orders because people saw their products on the new product display area and then went and found their stand to find out more about it. And this year, the new product display area is in the link between halls eight and nine. So actually everybody will walk past it or through it. So you know, just you've got to make sure your product is on display. It is a wasted opportunity if you don't if you don't enter it.

Does it cost anything for people to know.

No. It's completely free for exhibitors. All they need to do is fill in the form. And bring that product to us before 5:00 on Monday. Don't bring it after 5:00. The judging will have started and we won't be able to display it. And they also need to enter it. The closing date is the Wednesday before GLEE. So the closing date for entries is Wednesday the 4th of September. So they need to do it before then.

Excellent. Right. So would you give any advice or what advice would you give someone who's preparing to enter their product into the awards? You know, are there things which you see every year and you go, oh, they need to do this, you know?

Well, they just need to be very succinct. On the entry form there’s two questions, describe your new product and then tell us why it's unique and new. And they can only do that in 150 words. They need to be really succinct about that. Because the judges have that information when they're looking at the product. And in the initial round of judging, that's all they have. They have the product and they have the information that's been submitted. So make that a succinct and punchy as possible, so that the judges can get on and make their decisions. And especially this year as we're doing it on Monday evening, there won't be anybody around to go and ask, you know, we'll be the only people in the show apart from those people still finishing their stands, of which there will be quite a few, but they'll be busy.

Have you ever had fisticuffs between companies?

Oh, we've had them. Yeah. We get the odd upset from people that think they should have won but didn't win. Or think, you know, it wasn't judged properly. People are passionate about it, aren't they?

They really are. And people spend, you know, some people spend a lot of money on developing new products as well.

Oh, well, that's one of the interesting things is that there are pockets of the industry that are doing lots of serious R&D and development at the moment. And so on the gardening side, there's lots of development with the rollout of free compost. One of the interesting things with our industry is that, just because you've launched a new product and it wins an award, doesn't mean to say it's going to be an overnight success, because the rate of adoption of a new product in our industry is slower than in most other FMCG markets, because rather than three months, you have to go through three seasons. So very often it can take three years for a product to mature and become hugely successful, rather than three months as in other areas. So Kent and Stowe’s capability trowel from Westland won the best tool in 2021. And that went on to be a particularly, good product in terms of selling. And it's been copied by other people. So it must be good from that point of view.

Our training academy won, Phil, one year, for Evergreen.

It did, it won in 2021.

Phil and I were very much involved in that.

One of the key things, you know, which got me hooked into the gardening industry was working on those.

And of course the judges can only award a prize to a product if it's entered. And it is hugely frustrating when I walk around GLEE and see new products on stands that hadn't bothered to enter. And it's kind of like, well, you know. We can't go around the whole of GLEE judging products that haven’t actually been entered into the awards to give it a go.

So obviously you've been going to GLEE for a number of years. How would you say it's changed over the years? And have the changes been something you've liked?

GLEE is good. One of the great things about GLEE is the fact that, there is always a hubbub at GLEE, caused by people bumping into each other in the aisles. And that is significantly different to other trade shows. Because if you go to other trade shows where there are lots of people from lots of different industries, they go around and they do their business on all the stands, but they don't actually stop and chat in the aisles. But at GLEE there's a hell of a lot of that going on. Because that's just the nature of the industry.

Close knit community. So what are you most looking forward to about GLEE this year? Is there any one particular thing?

Floral Thursday, please. Because I get to have some fun on floral Thursday. But also we're also going to be announcing the winners of the GLEE 50 year heroes. I will be doing that just prior to the new product awards on the Tuesday evening. And now the nomination list has been compiled for those awards. And as of later on today, fingers crossed, the voting will go live on the GLEE Daily News. So, readers of GLEE Daily News and GTN can vote for the people they consider to be the GLEE heroes over 50 years of GLEE. So that'll be nice to do. And the chance to do some reminiscing about GLEE over the years.

So, Trevor, you mentioned there about Floral Thursday and wanting to get involved in that. I think it's not a secret that you have a wonderful range of floral shirts. And I think you've probably become synonymous with your floral shirts. Is it something that you actively still go out and purchase, or have you got enough now, do you think?

No, I'm always going to buy a new floral shirt. Well, Boyd and I rival each other for floral shirts and quantity of floral shirts, but we both have reached the point where our wives want us to get rid of some floral shirts that don't get worn anymore. So we are donating those to Greenfingers. And they will be on sale on the Greenfingers stand during GLEE for, you know, raising money for the charity. And anybody who comes to GLEE this year without a floral shirt, there's no excuse. You can go and buy one from the Greenfingers stand. You know, I wear floral shirts. I now wear them all the time. And there's something about wearing a floral shirt that's pretty amazing. Well, because it makes people smile. And I get lovely compliments. People like my shirts. But you know, it's because it's a floral shirt that makes them smile. And that's the whole thing about gardening, you know, gardening is just a wonderful thing that makes people happy. And, I think while we're in the gardening industry, let's flaunt it. Let's use it. You know, if it's a dull day. It was quite overcast here this morning, I almost put on a really bright shirt. Because it cheers me up as well. You know, the great thing is, you know, wear a floral shirt on the train, people stop and say hello.

And people will always remember you as well.

Yes. Well, I'd rather be remembered for what we write and what we do, rather than my floral shirt, but hey, let's be remembered for something. And to think that last year, we didn't break the world record for number of people in a floral shirt at GLEE, no, but there were more people in floral shirts at GLEE than ever before. The trouble was, the last Thursday of GLEE last year was actually quite busy, and people couldn't get off their stands to get into the stage area, and in the stage area we couldn't fit it any more people in either. So I'm really hoping this year we go even better than that and do break the world record for the number of people in the industry in floral gear. Because it's a great way to round off a great show, you know.

So, just quickly, just say to our listeners, why should they participate in Floral Thursday? What is what's the reasoning behind it?

The reasoning behind Floral Thursday is just to have some fun and raise money for Greenfingers. And you know, if your listeners don't know about Greenfingers, well, go to the Greenfingers website. But Greenfingers is the charity for the industry, I think that does the most for a section of society that needs help, but also in that in that sense also gives back to gardening because by making gardens at children's hospices, we're helping families, of people who are in very difficult situations. And we are illustrating the power of gardening and the power of gardens and the power of flowers in a healing process and just making life better. And Greenfingers has been doing that now for, Boyd will kick me if I get this wrong, 25 years. And I've been involved in it for about 20 of those in one way or another. And if you go to a hospice, and speak to the people, you find that it's the people who work in the hospice that benefit from the garden. It's the families and it's actually the other children of the family where they might have a child with life limiting illness that benefit from the garden. And you know, for gardening to bring so much joy to people, and do it in a way where it's the industry giving to them, they're actually giving back to us because they’re underlining and pushing back the message that gardening is good and that gardening is something that people should do more of. That's why I do it. I’m a passionate believer, and there's loads of other people doing lots of other fundraising for Greenfingers. All I can do is give as much publicity to them as possible and just have some fun on floral Thursday, you know.

So Trevor, this might be an awkward question and I understand if you don't want to answer it, but do you have a favourite person that you've interviewed in your years on GTN and Garden Radio?

I’ve got lots of favourites. The most memorable interview I've done on GTN in recent years was an interview I did with Paul Cooling. And we interviewed Paul shortly after they'd set up the employee scheme at cooling. So the business had gone into an employee trust ownership. I can't remember the exact words of it. And, I mean, I've known Paul for years, but it was really interesting to listen to his insight and his caring about his business and his staff. And he explained that he'd had plenty of offers from other people wanting to buy the business. But the thing I remember most was he said, look, you know, he intended to live in the village for a number of years, and he wanted to be able to walk through the village and hold his head up high and not feel that he'd sold out, and people had lost their jobs because he sold out. Sadly, he died that Christmas. And so it's memorable from the point of view of the foresight that he had to do that for his business at the time. I mean, he didn't know, he died from a stroke. But in doing that, he had set up his business for the future in the security that it was going to be run by the employees rather than taken over by another person.

That's an incredible story.

It is. But the other thing is, it's the epitome of the sense of nurture that is inherent in our business and is actually, an inherent part of why people are successful in our industry. If you come from a growing plants background, you have an in-built sense of nurture.

You can't sell dead plants. You know, so you, and then your team, are brought up understanding that you have to look after plants, you have to look after things. And it's really interesting if you track back through all the garden centres that developed from nurseries and then they became big garden centres like Bents in the northwest and Barton Grange. And you look at the things that they've done to their businesses because of that sense of nurture, they've done them better than any other retailer would do them. Their attention to detail is amazing. Their quality control is amazing, their customer service is amazing. And Paul Cooling had that sense of nurture about his business, but also about his staff and all the people he worked with and his village and everything. So, that was really, really special.

That's lovely. Thank you.

Excellent. So, Trevor, for any of our listeners who are going to be attending GLEE this year, can you give us your best tips for making the most of your time at the show, other than visiting the new products?

That’s it, just visit the new product show. But if you're visiting Glee, please read as much as you can online. Make sure you subscribe to the GLEE Daily News. Get that. Plan your visit. You know, look for the things that you really want to go and see. Because if you're at GLEE for one day, two days or three days, you still have limited time. You need to have a list of things that you want to cover off. And the planning is really important this year because it's a different layout from the last 3 or 4 years, because of the change of halls. So you need to work out where people are so you don't waste time trying to find exhibitors. Yeah, just, you know, make sure you're there. And having planned your time, plan in some time just to walk the show, because you just never know what you will find around the corner. A product or an exhibitor that's got something that's right for you. So, do spend some time walking the show as well.

Great advice.

Yeah, really good. So, Trevor, do you actually enjoy gardening yourself?

Do I enjoy gardening? It depends what sort of gardening I'm doing, Phil. If I'm picking up plants that have to be moved? No. Yeah, I love gardening, I love creating gardens. My wife is the main gardener, and I do as I'm told. I'm not a plant person. I'm not a horticulturalist. I'm a gardener. And I love things that look wonderful. And I'm particularly lucky because my wife Karen builds gardens, creates garden areas, and particularly with scented plants. So there's always some an amazing scents in the garden, not just how it looks, but also how it smells, how it feels. And we're very lucky, you know, we have a garden that we've got different areas of. So, you know, we can make the most of it. When the dogs are not wrecking it.

I think that's one of the amazing things about gardens, though, isn't it? It's not just a single sensory thing. It involves all the senses, doesn't it? You can enjoy the garden in so many different ways. I just want to say thanks so much, Trevor, for joining us on The Underground today. It's been fascinating talking to you, getting a good insight into what you do with Garden Trade News and all the other things that you were involved in. And also learning about your involvement in GLEE and the new product awards as well. It's going to be fascinating to watch how that evolves this year.

I must admit, I've always looked at the new product awards and been part of a company that used to enter it. So I'm going to be looking at it with new eyes this time. Definitely.

And hopefully you'll both come along and spot some some good new products yourself. And come along and watch some of the pitching. Over the years, the people doing the pitching, if it's people who have done it before, they're getting better at it. They literally have two minutes and we cut them off at two minutes. And so it's very succinct and very good, but it does make a big difference.

And pitching happens on Tuesday, is that right?

At 9:30 on Tuesday, we start the pitching and, yeah, all hell breaks loose.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Trevor. It's been enlightening talking to you and fascinating as well.

Thank you both. Hope to see you at GLEE.

Well, what a lovely chat.

Absolutely. And very knowledgeable. And just yeah, loads of information about the new product awards. And I think it really hammers home how important it is to enter the new product awards. If you know, if you've got any product, get it out there.

Exactly. And make sure you spend that time writing your 150 words on your award entry, because I think that really does make a difference. So do craft that. Don't don't just rattle it off.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And you know, there is still over a week to get round to entering. And also get your pitches sorted, just in case you get shortlisted, you know, slick. And make sure you know what your product is. Don't just send your marketing person. Make sure it's somebody who's passionate and really believes in what they're promoting. That would be my advice. So, yeah. Another GLEE special. Hope people are enjoying that. And, we've got another one coming next week. Who’s that going to be with Phil, next week?

So next week we've got the finalists from the talent store. So it's going to be a fantastic week. I think we're going to have a really fun chat with them.

That's lovely. Looking forward to that. I'll see you then, Phil.

Yeah, thanks very much, Kate. Cheers.