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BHF shops
Introduction
The BHF celebrated the 15th birthday of its national charity shop chain this year. For the year 2004-05, net income from shops went up by 5.5% to £9.6m - an all time record. This is thanks to the hard work and efforts of the dedicated staff and volunteers who run our smart and successful British Heart Foundation shops across the UK.
Action
We introduced a popular new accessories range and our own fashionable, red ‘Feel the Pulse’ bands, seen on the wrists of singers and TV presenters, footballers and schoolchildren.
Premiership footballer Mario Melchiot knows the devastating impact heart disease can have on a family. His older brother died suddenly in his sleep from a heart attack when Mario was a teenager. The Birmingham City defender and dedicated BHF supporter launched our ‘Feel the Pulse’ wristbands. Following the launch some shops sold out within minutes of receiving them.
BHF Shops gave full support to the Real Valentine Appeal. Shoppers and passers-by were urged to post their hand-written Love Notes in our shop windows for a suggested donation of £1. During a successful Heart Week campaign in June, our shops offered the BHF pin-on heart ribbons for sale.
Impact
It proved a difficult year for clothing sales, mainly due to a wet summer followed by a mild winter. However, this was more than offset by excellent improvements in sales of our donated books and music, videos and accessories.
February 2005 saw the best-ever result for the Valentine Love Notes campaign, which brought in over £200,000 and four marriage proposals, in Enniskillen, Wimbledon, Luton and Huntingdon. The Heart Week ribbons raised over £225,000.
Each year we nominate a Shop of the Year and Paignton was chosen for 2004/05. Over the last nine years the shop has made over £1.3 million income. Manager Linda Kennard says,
“We were thrilled to be named BHF Shop of the year. Our customers always say that they enjoy the atmosphere in the shop and that it's hard to find such good customer service anywhere else on the high street. Paignton has great community spirit and we are always keen to give support to the local BHF fundraising events.”
We now have 9,200 volunteers helping to run our charity shops; double the number we had three years ago at the start of our volunteer initiative. Many have worked for the Foundation for many years.
Next steps
In May 2005 we opened our 500th BHF Shop; a specialist Furniture and Electrical store in Northampton. New innovations like our Furniture and Electrical stores are now making a real impact on our fundraising income. They also demonstrate what remarkable progress BHF Shops have made since we opened our first small stores, which didn't even have a proper till! Around 40 new shops are projected to open this year.
A major project planned for 2005-06 is the launch of a refurbishment programme. These new-look shops should produce an improvement of over 20% on existing trading performance. If this is achieved overall it will allow the cost of the investment to be paid back within two years.
We want to spend less on collecting goods house-to-house and encourage more over-the-counter donations. A major campaign will be launched aimed at raising awareness of our need. By giving our volunteers more responsibility in our shops and our managers more time for customer service, Shops are poised to make a giant leap forward.