The credit crunch and an increased awareness of ethical shopping are to thank for a 7% jump in Oxfam’s sales, £80m across their 730 stores (that’s 100 more stores than WH Smith fact fans). Their 123 bookshops alone took over £19m last year and an extra £1million was raised selling secondhand M&S clothing after people donating them in received £5 M&S tokens. That made them the UK’s second biggest seller of second-hand books. Of course, it’s a little easier for Oxfam to shine against others on the high street: only 5% of Oxfam’s staff of almost 25,000 are paid. And while Oxfam pays the same rents as its High Street neighbours, as a charity it stumps up only one fifth of the business rate. Still, with and income “leveling off” expectations have been set for £100m in sales this year, so one thing Oxfam wont be selling is it’s brown trousers.
Tags: charity, fashion, Growth, High Street, Increased sales, Reail
The impact of Tesco on local high streets is to become part of the syllabus in a modern “make-over” for GCSE geography - which will include the influence of retail giants and climate change. Tesco’s expansion has drawn criticism from those who fear that it threatens the diversity of local, independent shops - with accusations that it was creating “Tesco towns”. Geography students will be able to examine the retailer’s “socio-economic impact on high streets”. The environmental campaigners’ education co-ordinator, Vicki Felgate, says that “issues such as how our consumer choices impact upon the world around us is vital to giving young people an understanding of how they can be responsible citizens”. Pupils will also be allowed to present work as cartoons, videos or poems. Or songs, or potato prints, or mood charts, no doubt. Jamie feels “raincloud.” No wonder think-tank
The London office of Goldman Sachs is on record at Companies House as having pre-tax profits of $2,744bn. Gulp. So how much of that goes to chairty? just under $4m. Not much? That’s double what the firm gave in 2006 - a pretty miserly $2m. That’s how the rich stay rich. Tight bastards.
Intel has withdrawn its funding and technical help from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project which aims to put cheap laptops in the hands of children in the developing world. The firm cited “philisophical” differences - in that they believe they should be able to make money elsewhere, while OLPC had asked Intel to stop backing rival low-cost laptops. Prior to Intel’s involvement, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte criticised the chip firm for what he called its attempts to undermine the project’s work (selling their own laptop at a loss to beat the OLPC model). How charitable!
