Tesco scooped the Fresh Flower Retailer of the Year Award at an awards ceremony, in London, beating other shortlisted retailers Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer.

The panel judging the brand new award category, which was sponsored by the Flower Council of Holland, described Tesco as a 'true campaigner for the flower category'.

Judges were particularly impressed with the supermarket's cross and link promotions and its use of Clubcard data to effectively target its ranges. They complimented the flower department's 'strong year on year growth' achieved through a major investment in both fixtures and staff training.

Speaking after the awards ceremony at London's Grosvenor Hotel, Park Lane, Tesco's cut flower buyer, Jacky Stephen, said: 'We are delighted to have been recognised as the UK's top fresh flower retailer. 'The award is a credit to all the hard work carried out by the horticulture and marketing teams and staff in our 550 flower selling branches.

'We attribute our success to our ability to source top quality flowers from the best sources at value for money prices, our in-depth analysis of which flowers sell best in-store, our marketing campaigns and promotions, as well as our progressive staff training programmes.

'Our close working relationship with our suppliers has also been invaluable and we would like to thank them too.' Tesco is Europe's number one retailer of cut flowers holding a 28 per cent share of the multiple cut flower market and 15 per cent of the entire UK cut flower market. Over the last five years, the supermarket has grown its cut flower business by 20 per cent plus per annum.

This, it said, can be attributed to a number of factors: Investment in staff training Development of revolutionary new flower merchandising stands - a £1million investment in fixtures Two year in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis on which ranges sell well in store enabling Tesco to tailor its cut flower range according to the customer profiles of individual stores.

Quarterly marketing campaigns backed by the Flower Council of Holland.

The implementation of a corporate-wide approach to important annual events such as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Easter and Christmas. Many of these events are led by the flower category and initiatives included displaying flowers with greetings cards as well as on the main flower fixture in larger stores.

Judges were also impressed by Tesco's flower offering for Valentine's Day on tesco.com - the supermarket offered flower delivery for this event for the first time and allowed customers to key in Valentine's Day messages to be attached to the flowers.

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