Air Ambulance Story

How Shopiago helped Your Local Air Ambulance raise vital funds

With over 50 shops across the country, The Air Ambulance Service’s strong retail presence has always been central to the charity’s fundraising efforts. To help strengthen their digital sales presence, back in November 2019 the charity decided to introduce Shopiago. The Air Ambulance Service was particularly drawn to the function enabling online sales to count towards individual shop revenues. The charity’s early adoption of Shopiago set them en route to weather the added pressure of the pandemic and the resulting store closures. All of this has allowed the charity to continue to deliver their vital, non-government funded work, over a year where it’s been needed more than ever.

Shopiago
Shopiago

The Challenge

The main challenge faced by Your Local Air Ambulance was incentivising shops to log donations online, and share their stock with the charity’s e-commerce hub for listing. With the previous process failing to attribute sales to the individual shops, many managers preferred to keep stock in store.
The charity rightly saw this as a blocker to maximising the sale price of high-value items so, in order to increase the speed and frequency of listings, increasing shop engagement with the online store was a real point of focus. This required a process that was easy for staff to learn and follow. 
"

The team did a brilliant job training our teams and volunteers, and explaining the benefits of online selling, and the results speak for themselves. When a Lego set with a starting price of £19.99 sold online for £730, we knew we’d made a good decision.

"

Hollie Arnold, e-commerce manager at Your Local Air Ambulance

Shopiago

The Shopiago roll-out

The charity decided to roll out Shopiago to help the shops move stock faster, get better sale prices, and operate more efficiently. Importantly, items sold via Shopiago count towards a shop’s individual sales figures, and shop managers can see what happens to the donations they send to the hub. This is a big motivator for shops to send more donations to be sold online in order to increase their revenue.
Shopiago provided the Air Ambulance with a comprehensive training programme for both store and warehouse staff and volunteers, which the charity rolled out across its network of shops so everyone felt confident using the system. Using Shopiago, the warehouse team were better able to identify and value items, which ensured all donations were sold for the best possible price, and in addition helped the team to manage counterfeit items and reduce postage costs. 
"

Shopiago has been a great vehicle to help us achieve the huge opportunity available for online sales.

"

Hollie Arnold, e-commerce manager at Your Local Air Ambulance

Results

Since the Shopiago roll-out was completed, feedback from volunteers and e-commerce teams at Your Local Air Ambulance has been hugely positive. Shopiago now represents 97% of the charity’s online sales, and the charity has seen an impressive 50% increase in the number of its charity shops that are listing products online. In addition, the overall range of products available has improved, with a 135% increase in the number of items sold.
On average, online sale prices have more than doubled since the charity began using the platform, with a record month of average sale prices reported in May 2021. Individual stores also saw some exceptional revenue increases. Barnet, Hemel and Muswell Hill shops all increased revenue by over 200%, and Bakewell increased sales by 119%.
The warehouse team has also seen significant improvements - it previously received on average 17 support enquiries from shop branches per day, but this has now reduced to just 1 - 2 per week. Since Shopiago was implemented, there have been far fewer picking errors, resulting in fewer costly refunds. Gift Aid is fully tracked and automated - saving valuable administration time, and a click-and-collect service has been set up in stores. 

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