Don't restrict yourself to one route to market
The lockdown period was a challenging time for many businesses. One major UK charity was hit particularly hard when it was cut off from its established clientele due to buyers being unable to access their high street shops. With no way to liquidate donations, the charity found themselves steadily amassing a large amount of stock which was taking up a great deal of space and ultimately costing them in storage fees. These costs were eating into the profits they desperately needed to generate to support their cause.
If this problem had continued, then the charity would have been forced to start disposing of donations that would have been perfectly saleable under other circumstances. This was a last resort which the charity wanted to do its utmost to avoid. The press that resorting to such an act would generate would be a public relations disaster, therefore, it was imperative that they reached an alternative solution quickly.
We were approached by their senior leaders and asked to create a solution which gave them access to our large, online buyers base via our online auction and ecommerce operations. This gave them a secondary sales avenue that they hadn't considered previously. This lifeline was vital to the charity's survival during the pandemic as it was able to continue its business during lockdown, providing essential revenue in a period when a lot of companies were failing due to their inability to adapt to the rapidly changing climate.
