The formula for greater charity retail sales & profits

During 2024 Charity Retail Sales overall declined year on year in many charities but not all have had declining sales. Footfall decreased during 2024, so every charity retailer had to work harder and ensure their retail operations delivered excellence in the instore customer journey and best practice. There is a formula for increasing sales and profits in every charity retail business which some charities are using successfully.

With the large increase in costs that all charities are suffering from, improving income from retail has never been more important. There are 5 key elements to the formula for growing sales and profits.

1. Ensure the customer journey in every shop is optimised, including the use of hot spots and retail space to best practice. An optimised shop layout will improve sale

2. Ensure the pricing of donations uses science rather than guess work, which is dependent on the shop teams or simple flatline pricing that makes no allowance for the true value of the donations. There are some excellent tools available to help shop teams price donations to best practice which are proven to improve sale

3. Invest in the training and development of the retail teams over and above the compulsory training. The investment in commercial training and best practices will improve the skills and capability of the retail team and sales. Choosing the right training partner is criticially important and the mist effective is hands on interactive classroom training.

4. Improve the efficiency of e-commerce operation to generate the maximum sales and profits. Many charity e-commerce operations are very similar to a home e-bay operation rather than a business e-commerce operation; therefore they are often lacking in efficient business systems and alignment to industry best practice. These are the key things to look at to check alignment to best practice:

A. Using the right selling platforms that matches the donations available.

B. Number of items listed per day per employed person should be 15.

C. The minimum price listed per items should be £30.

D. The use of Sku numbers for all listing.

E. The E-Commerce room racking labelling compared to best practice.

F. The use of software to improve the distribution / logistics part of the operation.

5. Have a robust up to date Retail Strategy to ensure there is a clear direction for the retail business. This should include improving the efficiency of the e-commerce operation, Training and development of the retail team, pricing of donations and the customer journey. It also needs to include future strategic plans and detailed financial modelling of every aspect to ensure the budget is aligned to the strategy.