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Future proofing your charity retail operation

I’ve been working with and talking to many charities with retail operations recently, and there’s quite a list of challenges they’re facing.  These include:

• Falling profits
• Rising costs
• A slump on the high street
• Customers’ falling disposable income
• Post-Brexit drop in confidence

But it’s not all doom and gloom – In 2025 brick-and-mortar stores are still projected to deliver 85% of UK sales.  But if you want to ensure that your charity is still generating a strong profit and profile from its high street presence, you must think differently.  If you can adapt to the changing environment, this can be a very exciting moment in retail history.  Here’s my 5 tips to stay ahead of the curve in charity retail:

1. Online development

There’s no denying that if you’re going to stay ahead of the pack, you need a strong digital presence.  A strong digital presence enhances the traditional shop experience, and vice versa.  Look at Cancer Research UK – all shops are encouraged to have a social media presence. And about half of Oxfam’s 620 stores sell clothes online.  As a result, these sales were up 33% at Christmas and it hopes to double its online sales to reach 5% of the business in just 3 years.

2.  In store experience

Even the online giant Amazon is opening bricks and mortar stores because they know that a unique store experience gives shoppers a compelling reason to engage with and revisit the brand.  John Lewis has a Customer Experience director and Waitrose is hosting yoga classes in some of its stores.  It’s essential that charity retailers design and use the sales areas for experiences as well as for displaying products.  Build stories not just stores!

Charities have some incredible brands and identities, so get these into your sales areas and bring the shopping experience to life.  Martin House Children’s Hospice has done this brilliantly by adding the artwork used in the hospice onto the shop walls.  Customers love the stronger association and will be increasingly buying into a brand as well as just purchasing a product.

3.  Personalisation and the Retail Revolution

Three-quarters of customers want personalized shopping experiences as a more personalised experience makes customers feel good and keeps them coming back.  Some commercial retailers use data-driven insights from customers’ purchases to deliver bespoke and unique customer experiences.  Click2Fit is an American online fashion retailer that uses thousands of rules developed by personal shoppers to select each customer’s perfect items.  After a few minutes creating a profile, the virtual personal shopper picks out clothing to fit and flatter you from styles that suit your lifestyle and budget.

The Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence are creating a Retail Revolution to support this further.  This might involve robots picking and packing to reduce customer costs, automated till points to speed up shopping (debatable!) or door counters that connect and predict footfall to your phone along with weather apps to decide the number of staff needed to give customers the best service.

4.  Environmental impact

Charity retailers reuse or recycle 95% of items donated to their shops, making the sector the greenest on the High Street. But this is not a well-known fact.  In recent weeks, the grocer Iceland captured media headlines by declaring it will be the first UK retailer to abolish plastic packaging, and Wagamama announced it is ditching plastic straws.  Charity retailers must seize the moment and start making the headlines – come on, who’s going to be the first to abolish plastic carrier bags?

5.  Community: Growing loyalty

Retailers know that they must nurture customer loyalty and inject heart and soul into their business.  Sonos studios in London is doing this by creating “a unique, acoustically tunable space where anyone can go to hear music as it should sound; where artists can experiment and share new ideas; a connecting point for a global network of musicians and makers.”  It’s not a shop and you can’t buy Sonos products.  It’s all about developing the brand’s relationship with its customers.   When I developed the youth-led charity retail brand Goodstock, we knew it needed a unique identity and had to directly appeal to its customer base, so we added events and experiences such as a popup nail bar, stylists, a DJ spot, youth markets and a yoga class –hey Waitrose, charity retail got there first!