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Great summer for bookshop
The Weldmar hospice staff newsletter just came round. Some very nice compliments for the bookshop - we've had very strong sales this summer. We expected to do better than last year, but we didn't expect to be up by over 40% !
It's a whole combination of things. We've got more volunteers; we're better at spotting what will sell; we've got display tables outside the shop whenever it isn't raining; we've gained a reputation for friendly service and we've got a lot better at pricing. We still use Amazon and ABE as a guide, but we also have become better at recognising when the pricing there is being done by guesswork and have a lot more confidence in knowing when to price above or below the Internet prices.
It's very good for morale.
We definitely caught more of the tourist trade this year. We're learning which books are seasonal. Children's books sell much better in the summer as families are on holiday together and children of working parents are often out with their grandparents.
University text books also sell better in the summer as the students are home from university. We've had good sales of things like recent books on organic chemistry. I still don't know how we came to have a donation of a large number of high quality books on university maths and chemistry, but that particular donor has helped us raise a lot of cash - it's a real shame that there was no gift aid on it.
If you're a taxpayer and donate anything valuable to a charity shop, make sure that you fill in a gift aid declaration (and ask for a form if staff forget to offer). We'd have made over a hundred pounds extra for the Hospice if there had been gift aid on the text books.
It's a whole combination of things. We've got more volunteers; we're better at spotting what will sell; we've got display tables outside the shop whenever it isn't raining; we've gained a reputation for friendly service and we've got a lot better at pricing. We still use Amazon and ABE as a guide, but we also have become better at recognising when the pricing there is being done by guesswork and have a lot more confidence in knowing when to price above or below the Internet prices.
It's very good for morale.
We definitely caught more of the tourist trade this year. We're learning which books are seasonal. Children's books sell much better in the summer as families are on holiday together and children of working parents are often out with their grandparents.
University text books also sell better in the summer as the students are home from university. We've had good sales of things like recent books on organic chemistry. I still don't know how we came to have a donation of a large number of high quality books on university maths and chemistry, but that particular donor has helped us raise a lot of cash - it's a real shame that there was no gift aid on it.
If you're a taxpayer and donate anything valuable to a charity shop, make sure that you fill in a gift aid declaration (and ask for a form if staff forget to offer). We'd have made over a hundred pounds extra for the Hospice if there had been gift aid on the text books.
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In addition to those people, there are also staff on the till who forget to ask if a person is a tax payer. Our volunteers are really on the ball and rarely miss anyone, but other shops miss some out. Our text books could easily have come from someone who was never asked. (Anyone who has several hundred pounds worth of books to donate is likely to be earning reasonable money)
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You are such a great manager!!!