Featured news - Store Wars

Business-savvy colleagues went head to head to see who could make the most money for Barnardo's when they took over four of the charity’s stores for a day last month.

The winning team filled the tills at the Slough store with an amazing £6,455 after enlisting the help of Asos.com. The online fashion retailer, which is one of our business customers, donated rails of new clothes to sell in store.

Overall the four competing teams, all from Royal Mail’s large business sales unit, raised an incredible £12,000 through the Store Wars challenge, with the three other teams taking over shops in Bolton, Bath and Huddersfield.

The victorious group at Slough celebrated a spectacular 2,233% increase on a normal day’s takings thanks to the donations from Asos.com, which also sent along two stylists to encourage shoppers to splash out by giving advice on fashion trends.

It was a real team effort, with drivers from the Slough distribution centre collecting the clothes from the company’s base in Hemel Hempstead and operational colleagues lending much-needed support on the tills.

They also held clothes sales for people at Mount Pleasant and Greenford mail centres in London before the big day, but there was still plenty of stock left. ‘We had a whole shop full of great quality clothes,’ says Gerry Madden, a partnership director for Royal Mail.‘It was heaven for fashion lovers. People were coming in and spending really large amounts of money.’

One of the other teams, at Huddersfield, called on local rugby team the Huddersfield Giants for support. Three players came along to greet customers and donate a signed ball as a raffle prize. Postmen and women at Huddersfield delivery office joined in, helping to pull in shoppers by posting 10,000 flyers.

By the end of the day the shop had banked £2,000, including a £350 donation from colleagues at Leeds mail centre. Sales development manager Emma Shaw has two words of guidance to anyone taking on a similar challenge – good planning.

‘My advice is to get together as early as possible. Put together a plan and give people responsibility for different areas,’ she says.

*If you’re feeling inspired by this story, why not try the new Stock Exchange challenge?