October 13, 2023 • 50 mins
Andrew Ostcliffe of Oxfam in the UK navigates e-commerce waters that many other hardened online retailers would avoid. Three revenue streams, products distributed over more than 600 locations, 250,000-plus SKUs, and a diverse inventory that changes by the minute.
Welcome to the world of decentralised charity retail—both online and in store.
Join Andrew as he leads Ger and Gordon through this daunting, yet highly effective, e-commerce maze. A maze that's built on employee experience (EX)—in more ways than one.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
This is Functional & Fabulous, the omnichannel podcast where we unbox tales of online retail and digital transformation.
In this episode... we talk an awful lot about CX.
Wait, what?
Is it CX-y?
No...
Invest in cork, invest in EX.
Lads, can we just stick to the topic, please?
The perfect Saturday night wardrobe...
(00:21):
Oh my God.
Fake tan, shoulder pads and holy water fonts.
What?
Why holy water?
You don't want to go down there with your metal t-shirts because you're really going to look out of place.
Okay, has anybody got anything to say about ecommerce?
Good question.
Erm...
This episode of Functional & Fabulous is brought to you with pride by StudioForty9,
(00:45):
retail ecommerce experts, omnichannel growth consultants and cut-through performance marketing specialists.
StudioForty9, where your digital retail success is built.
Hello, I'm delighted to welcome you to another episode of Functional & Fabulous and it's a pleasure to host Andy Ostcliffe today.
Andy has some serious retail chops having worked for John Lewis, the UK's favourite and most formidable retailer, for nearly four years before rising to the challenge of building up the ecommerce presence for the British Heart Foundation for a further four years.
(01:18):
And he's now Head of Ecommerce and Retail Innovation for Oxfam.
Andy, it's great to have you here today.
Hi Andy, welcome to the podcast.
A pleasure, Gordon and Gerard, thank you.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Tell us, you moved from traditional retail to ecommerce and charity.
Was that a big decision for you?
Yeah, kind of, yeah.
(01:38):
I have a background in ecommerce, something that I enjoyed as a bit of a hobby, which then turned into a business, which then outgrew the house.
I guess it was time then, really, to put that to good effect and where better to do it than a charity?
(01:59):
Brilliant.
So if we can dive into this.
So Andy, you're the first person that's been on the podcast that actually works with a charity, and I think it'd probably be a good framing question to start off with of, what's different about working in, I suppose, charity retail, if that's what we can call it, than working in a more traditional seasonal retailer?
(02:26):
Absolutely.
I think one of the main points that charity retailing offers is selection.
And boy, is that a retailer's answer.
But this is a selection that changes daily, weekly, I mean, sometimes hourly.
And the draw of the charity shop is, well, what have you got this week?
(02:52):
What's new?
Is there any bargains or collectibles that I'm looking for?
And for some of our shoppers and customers, it's actually a destination.
You do know there are people who go out onto the high street of, come on, we'll have a charity shop afternoon and they make it a kind of a retail event between themselves or friends and family and they go out shopping in charity shops.
(03:19):
So I think it's really interesting in being able to bring that unique offer to shoppers.
And then if you just expand that experience to online, whereas you might look at local football in a particular town or city where we've got one of our shops, expand that across online and suddenly you're reaching millions of people who are kind of going, hmm, I wonder what new you've got this week?
(03:47):
That's really interesting.
So selection, like, retailers love having lots and lots of product width, but I guess there's very little, if any, depth in the product that you're selling.
Would I be right in that assumption?
No, you'd be surprised.
So if you look at depth, we would look at depth in terms of maybe seasonality.
(04:14):
We can also look at depth in terms of corporate donations as well.
So we've got, at the moment, several thousands of pairs of new denim jeans, but across different styles.
So if you were shopping online and you're looking for a bit of bargain in terms of new denim jeans or jackets or swimsuits or t-shirts, et cetera, et cetera.
(04:43):
So the corporate donation element of the type of stock that we would carry online is really exciting for depth.
But certainly from that physical aspect of being in shop or store, that depth can be in seasonality.
But don't forget also, Gordon, that in terms of, you've then got the new product selection, which is still quite new for charity retailing.
(05:10):
So you've got the Sourced by Oxfam range, and that Sourced by Oxfam range covers four or five different brands of Fairtrade chocolate.
It's the same in tea and coffee.
And then it's all the products that we have from the producer groups around the world that we stock and supply, such as the I was a sari shopping bag.
(05:30):
So, no, it's beyond that singular item that might be a bargain or a bit of a collectible.
So you've got kind of three...
are we right then in our assumption that you've got kind of three?
You've got the made by Oxfam, corporate donations, and then the single items.
And that's how the proposition rounds out.
(05:52):
Absolutely, yes.
So what I'm really fascinated by, and if we can just park the corporate and the Sourced by Oxfam for a second, I'm really interested in how you manage those single items.
Because when we were first talking about, okay, we're going to meet Andy from Oxfam.
(06:12):
And I was thinking about how do you do production for these single items?
And I was just having palpitations at the thought of two things.
One is how do you do the photography product descriptions?
And then the second one was how on earth do you do, like, inventory accuracy and fulfillment?
(06:36):
So I was like, okay, wow.
They're two pretty big subjects, right?
Yeah, they're just a bit.
That's the entire operating model of what we do.
But okay, let's try and break it down into a couple of snapshots, really.
I'll give you some good examples.
So out of the building that's behind me, which is 100,000 square feet, it's in West Yorkshire, and it's where a number of our divisions are located.
(07:04):
One of those divisions will be our festivals team.
And traditionally, on a yearly basis, we will attend up to 12 festivals.
Leeds Festival, Download, and obviously Glastonbury being the largest.
And what that team will do is they will sort, they will curate for a specific festival.
(07:28):
So imagine, Royal Windsor is all about Dual, Barbour, Hunter wellies...
You don't want to go down there with heavy metal t-shirts because you're really going to look out of place.
So curating that particular offer, and it might be ranges of, it might be ranges of gilets, it might be ranges of jackets, it may be ranges of footwear, et cetera.
(07:50):
They will select and curate that product set for that specific event.
And of course, you've got other events where they will curate heavy metal t-shirts or surfwear, et cetera, et cetera.
So they're pretty good at doing that from this location.
I have to say the way that the majority of the individual items, in the way that they're listed, in the way that those particular items are curated, comes down to the expertise that we have within that shop network and volunteers.
(08:22):
So we're looking at almost 600 high street shops.
We've got more than 20,000 volunteers who thankfully give their time each week to Oxfam.
And we've been doing online at Oxfam since 2006 across our own marketplace, which is Oxfam online shop.
(08:44):
And those teams will be looking for various items of clothing, donations, which they feel would be quite interesting online.
And between those 600 shops, they collate that inventory on a weekly basis.
It's then exposed across our online shop.
(09:07):
So our inventory ranges on a typical week between 230,000 to 270,000 individual items.
You place your order on the online shop.
The shop themselves who have the item receive that order.
They do the packaging and postage, and that goes out to our customers.
(09:32):
So it's not as complicated as it sounds, although up to 270,000 items, which are all unique, you'd think, oh, why on earth are you going to try and find all that from in a big location, in a big warehouse?
The corporate donations work separately, but the individual ones, it all comes down to the expertise of colleagues and volunteers in shops.
(09:52):
It's the ultimate fulfil from store model.
Well, actually, it's the ultimate start in the store, like produce from store and fulfil from store.
So how do your volunteers, when they're adding a piece of content or when they're adding a product onto Oxfam Shop, have you just distributed your back end admin systems to say, whack in a photo there and whack in a product description?
(10:22):
There are standards, of course there are.
And there's some training and we've got colleagues.
It's just like any other shop network, even if you're in a commercial network, you'd have area managers and regional managers, et cetera.
And then, of course, there are people who work in the online team who can offer guidance and advice as well.
(10:45):
But generally, what our shops are doing is they're following a set of guidelines in terms of minimum number of pictures, type of description, and we've got our own listing tool.
So we will actually guide you through, almost like a template, we will guide you through that level of information that generally our buyers want to see or buyers want to see in terms of item specifics.
(11:11):
And then click a button and they can launch the listing onto that main site that we've got.
But of course, online shopping is changing almost weekly in terms of standards, in terms of customer trends.
So we will try and feed back into the network also top-selling items, which items are on trend, kind of fashions.
(11:37):
We've just gone through a period of back to school.
So children's clothing between the ages of 6 and 12 was on fire as a category in terms of how popular it was.
So if you've got some donations of school shoes that we can advertise, that we can list online, let's do that because it's a very popular category at this moment in time.
(11:59):
And can you tell us a little bit about how you manage the pricing for that?
I mean, you can set guidelines around the description that you're looking for and let's say attributes for filtering and photography and so on.
But who sets the price?
Who decides on the condition of this product as such that the price should be X, or this product in some cases, I guess, is valuable enough or rare enough that the price should be Y?
(12:27):
Can you talk us through that a bit?
Yeah, and pricing can be a challenge sometimes.
Generally, we're quite good at this.
So our colleagues in shop and volunteers will go out onto the marketplace.
We will use the places which are generally available, the vintage, the Depops, the eBays.
What's that item selling for?
(12:48):
And that will give us a guide.
I'll not give you the exact calculation, but that will give us some guidance as to what that particular item is valued at.
And if we follow that guidance, we've got a pretty good chance of selling the item.
We are experimenting with some automated pricing.
(13:08):
So we're looking at how we can automate pricing and we can get a little bit more streamlined, more minute-by-minute information in terms of data and trends on how things are selling.
And equally, we're looking at some AI that we can introduce into our own site that maybe gives the customer an option to do some kind of interaction with us in terms of suggestive pricing.
(13:32):
So you might find on eBay, you can make an offer.
I'm not saying we're there at the moment, but we're certainly experimenting with that type of technology to see if it's possible.
A haggling tool...
Haggling with your local Oxfam. One question, because I know that some of the people that Ger and I would work with on our travels will be still having palpitations now around 250,000 SKUs, but also inventory integrity there of when something is sold in the store, how does it then get taken off the website?
(14:14):
Delving into a good bit of detail.
Yeah, really good question.
I can go into one of our shops and I can start talking to the shop manager and the volunteers and say, show me where you do online.
Because every shop's got a little place where they do online.
They've got their computer set-up.
(14:34):
They've got their digital camera.
This is our online stock, Andy.
This is what we're selling this week.
This is what's coming.
So from an inventory perspective, they've got, they've separated off that stock.
It's not a case of those Levi 501s that are on a hanger in the shop are also online because trying to manage that would be quite complicated.
(14:57):
But certainly what we will do is we will separate the stock.
So this is online stock and this is in-shop stock.
I think quite complicated is possibly one of the most understated statements we've had because the complexity of that.
I was trying to understand that.
That's a lot of omnichannel complexity.
(15:19):
So the store separating that out is really interesting.
So do you then see that stores start to get a bit competitive with each other?
We do.
And where I see some of the competition is from our bookshops.
So Oxfam has 120 dedicated books and music shops.
(15:42):
Sometimes you'll find them in the same town as what we class as a standard shop, which is a clothing and new product shop.
But they tend to be very, very competitive.
And I have to say the knowledge that is within those bookshops is phenomenal.
So yes, you will have a particular bookshop that is very good at online.
(16:06):
It's a very slick streamlined process.
Books are generally quite small.
So they're easy to handle.
They're easy to list.
They're easy to store.
And they're easy to dispatch.
So our bookshops are really good at online.
And indeed, that's where you see a lot of the competition in that respect.
And are they also separating out the stock?
(16:26):
I mean, I presume not for the books. Really?
Absolutely, yeah.
And how are they making that choice?
I mean, even in a, let's say, a traditional retailer, you know, you're selling off the shop floor.
And, you know, it gives certain challenges because even when you put away the items in the store because they have been reserved or they're reserved for collection, you'll see sometimes store assistants selling them to customers who are coming in because that's what we have in the store.
(16:53):
And it's very hard to deny a sale.
How is that operating in the stores for Oxfam?
Okay, I cannot underestimate the expertise of the bookshop manager.
It is phenomenal.
You can be with one of these book experts and they can literally go, yep, that one, that one, and we'll sell that one.
(17:15):
And we'll put that one online as well.
It's just like, how do you know?
And maybe it's particularly a good publication in terms of crime fiction.
It can be at particular times of year recipe books.
It can be authors who are particularly popular.
(17:36):
They have almost a fixed sense of what looks really good in terms of book stock for online.
But we also do something quite interesting as well is that if you imagine the volume of books that we are shifting on a weekly basis, books at Oxfam in terms of our sales...
(17:58):
In terms of our online sales, books is worth about £3 million a year.
So it's a big category for us.
And we're able to use a back catalogue of books that we have sold previously.
So scan a book, gives you some details about it.
Have we sold it before?
(18:18):
What price did we sell it at before?
Click this.
So I think in that sense, we try and put some automation into that aspect as well.
But we're very reliant on that local knowledge.
And so if an item isn't moving in store, for example, are you moving it online and vice versa?
Are they looking at stock from that level?
(18:39):
Or does the item sell reasonably fast?
Is there an expectation that if I put a book online, it's going to sell within two weeks?
It's just like a commercial business, really, Gerard.
So different shops operate in different mechanisms.
(19:00):
There are particular titles that will attract customers to come into the shop and have a look.
And maybe it's a good in-shop or in-store sale.
Or if you're wanting to shift volume, it's online.
And the bookshop manager and the team that work within that shop will decide, are we going to put it out on the shop floor first and see if it sells in the first two weeks?
(19:25):
If not, should we put it online and give it a go there?
Other shops go, yep, that's definitely online.
Right, we'll put that lot online and we'll move the rest of the inventory through the shop.
We really do give that sense of empowerment to our shop managers.
It's their business.
They know their town.
They know their local customers.
(19:46):
They know what sells.
So why not empower them to make that decision and move the stock to the channel that's going to give us the best revenue and income, really?
I think that's fantastic.
I also think about some of the other types of businesses that we've worked with.
And they have real challenges mobilising their store teams.
(20:11):
And there's a lot of talk of channel cannibalisation.
That conversation is still happening.
I wish it would just end.
And resistance from store colleagues.
But what it sounds like you've done really successfully is engage those 20,000 volunteers to have the ultimate distributed team working on online.
(20:36):
How have you even done that?
It's spectacular.
It comes down to, I'd like to think it's a level of engagement that we have that's bi-directional between Oxfam and our volunteers.
Our volunteers will often say how much they enjoy working in the shop.
(20:59):
Sometimes it comes down to even the shop manager.
You know, I love working for the shop manager.
And the way that the shop manager looks after that team of volunteers is sometimes underestimated as well.
But ultimately, online is part of the shop's revenue and income.
And certainly what we've seen at Oxfam just over the last 18 months is where our revenues from online is seriously growing.
(21:29):
Now, you can look at your shop figures on a weekly basis.
As a shop manager, you can kind of see where that growth is coming from.
Both in-shop and online.
So if you're selling more online, there's almost like an encouragement, a camaraderie.
Wow, this is great.
(21:50):
Customers love it.
We love it.
And it generates income.
So I think in that sense, it's very engaging.
And there was an instance not so long ago where we started introducing eBay into one of our listing locations.
And I can remember initially some friction on selling on that particular platform.
(22:14):
We've done it before.
We've tried it.
And we know it won't work.
We put that team through some very specific training.
eBay helped us themselves.
And I was down in that location about six weeks later.
I literally had people running up to me and saying, you'll never guess what we've sold.
You'll never guess how much it sold for.
(22:35):
And that team were going home on an evening and watching on their mobile phones, items ending on auction.
Coming in the next day, the next morning, it was all about, did you see what we sold last night?
How much it sold for?
You can't train that.
I wish we could bottle it.
You can't train that.
But that sense of involvement, that sense of wow and wonderment is what those teams themselves build.
(23:07):
And it's fantastic to see that as a creation.
I can think of a few retailers that would really love to have that level of engagement and that level of commerciality built into their store teams.
But it also has to be, as Andy is saying, bi-directional because I can equally imagine, sometimes it can be hard to imagine how much wider your catalogue, your selection could be online, even though it's already very, very wide, but how much wider it could be.
(23:36):
And to trust in the opinion and the expertise of the person running the store to say, okay, we're not going to sell that online.
I could definitely imagine a lot of people saying, no, no, we must rush to get everything online.
That's our best way to sell it.
So there's definitely, you can see, there's definitely a sense of the bi-directionality of that.
(23:57):
Tell us a little bit more about the eBay side of things.
When you list a product up on the Oxfam store, your own kind of online store, is it then also listed on eBay or do you select which items to curate and list on eBay?
How do you do that side of things?
Good question.
We have generally a model at the moment where our shops will list a lot or almost all of our pre-loved donated items will be sold on Oxfam's online shop.
(24:29):
That's our own online shop.
What we do with eBay is the two major hubs that we've got, one in West Yorkshire, the other one is in Milton Keynes.
We have independent, well, they're part of Oxfam, but they're independent of the shop network, listing teams.
(24:50):
Those listing teams can en masse list corporate donations.
It's really interesting.
You get the list once and you may have got 1,500 pairs of the same jeans, but they're all in different sizes.
You do a really good job of the first listing.
You've got all your pictures up there.
You've got all your item specifics.
(25:13):
Then you just let the listing sell 1,500 pairs of jeans.
It's the space that you need rather than the people, power, time that it needs to list that.
That works particularly well.
We sell a full range of corporate donated items.
We have some items that come into these particular locations, which are either collectable, they can be quite unique, and we'll list those items as well on eBay.
(25:44):
For instance, it's Second-Hand September for Oxfam.
It's the flagship retail event in our calendar year.
We're exposing up to 6,000 individual items on our eBay page for Second-Hand September, complementing our Oxfam online shop offer, because we know that customers shop in different locations at different times, favouring different platforms, et cetera.
(26:17):
So the ethos of that and the rationale is be where your customer is.
So if you're operating on a different platform, we'll try and catch your attention.
But we've also started selling the new product on various platforms as well.
And a real surprise for us, which is a pleasant surprise, we started to sell wholesale Sourced by Oxfam products across the eBay platform.
(26:46):
So you can buy wholesale packs of Fairtrade tea, coffee, chocolate, Christmas cards.
So we offer a full range of Sourced by Oxfam products across that particular platform as well.
I love that we've been talking about eBay.
We've had a guest on the podcast from eBay before who talked about sustainability and talked about the importance of people buying less to create less landfill.
(27:18):
And Oxfam are kind of in this space.
As a general kind of trend, are you seeing that people are buying more pre-loved or is that something that hasn't registered with Oxfam?
But I suppose the question is, are you riding off the back of a sustainability wave there?
(27:42):
That's a good question.
Our relationship that we have with eBay is fantastic.
If you look at earlier on this year, eBay joined Oxfam for the launch of London Fashion Show.
So on the eve of the opening of London Fashion Show in a studio in Soho, we had celebrities and influencers walking down a catwalk with pre-loved fashion, of which those items were then auctioned on eBay.
(28:22):
And I think to look at that event in its entirety, fantastic that we were able to receive from those sales of those pre-loved items that had been down the catwalk an awful lot of interest.
And that generated some really interesting sales for us.
(28:42):
But it also generated almost 700 pieces of news, television interviews, radio, press coverage, influencers.
So in terms of, are we creating the story or are we just riding on the back of a trend around pre-loved fashion?
(29:03):
I could use that example to say, we're actually creating the story rather than follow it.
And to put that into some kind of context, Second-Hand September for Oxfam this year, we're in our fifth year of Second-Hand September.
Last year, we saw the highest sales that we've seen in the history of Oxfam from the high street on the back of Second-Hand September.
(29:33):
So we're clearly connecting and we're clearly being able to put across a message in that second-hand doesn't need to be second-best.
Got it.
I love that.
Second-hand is not second-best.
What you've explained to us here this afternoon it's really going through this wonderful distributed team that you've got.
(29:56):
You've got these three great business areas.
And one of the questions that's floating around my head is, how big a centralised team do you need to run something like this?
Team size is something that we talk about a lot.
We're often of the view that everybody needs more merchandisers.
Everybody needs more product listers.
(30:17):
Everyone needs more marketeers.
Do you have a big old central team running this, Andy?
I wouldn't say they're central anymore.
I'd say they're all over the place in terms of different locations.
So, yes is the answer.
But in terms of where they reside, clearly Yorkshire, then Milton Keynes, then in Oxford, in terms of where those team locations are.
(30:44):
What's a really good example to pick out here in terms of team size?
Sourced by Oxfam, new goods.
And you probably think sometimes new goods within a charity might be the odd key ring or the pound coin that you put in a shopping trolley.
But that range that Oxfam has is around 1,200, 1,300 different items.
(31:08):
And it varies from foods to board games to some of the producer communities that we support overseas and sell their products through our shop network.
That business is worth in sales revenue £15 million this year.
So, sizable.
Yes, a business in its own sense.
(31:30):
And will be supported by a team of buyers, merchandisers.
We've got specialist audit and ethical teams in there.
You just don't come to Oxfam and say, hey, we've got a great product.
Would you like to sell it?
We want to know where it's come from?
We want to know who's produced it?
(31:51):
We want to know what packaging it's in?
We want to know how it's getting here?
We want to know if you're paying a living wage?
We want to know who owns the company, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
That Sourced by Oxfam tag means something.
And to support that, there's a team just in that particular location in excess of 20 individuals who make that magic happen.
(32:17):
Then you've got the distribution, the logistics, the ship, PickPack and Dispatch that supports that.
And customer services to look after any queries or returns, et cetera.
They can be quite sizable teams, but it's based on what the business generates.
That makes a lot of sense.
(32:38):
And so you really are running a traditional ecommerce business, if you like, alongside the other business lines that you have.
Yeah.
And I wonder how challenging does that make marketing?
You know, are you kind of mainly marketing to your customer as, you know, to that person who wants to come back week after week to see what's new in Oxfam this week?
(33:04):
What bargains or what finds might I discover?
Or are you marketing at the product level to try and sell the products that you have?
Or are you marketing at, let's say, the business line level to market the Sourced by Oxfam?
You know, does that make it complicated for you?
Or how do you approach it?
(33:25):
It's an interesting vehicle that we have and we use in order to promote, brand, cause, programme and retail.
And again, another big specialist team are very good at what they do.
If you look at Second-Hand September last year, as an example, we had 67 influencers who engaged with that retail event.
(33:56):
And that reached an audience of three million people.
We received 32,000 new opted in supporters to Oxfam's database.
And of course, we've then got social.
So we're on all the main platforms in terms of a social appearance as well.
(34:19):
And those are great.
But if you look at, well then, okay, but you've got a new product, how do you tell people you've got a new product?
A lot of our customers who are coming into our physical shop network will make a donated purchase and they will make a new goods purchase as well.
So for instance, we try and complement the new goods product set to ranges that we have in shops.
(34:45):
So if you go into a bookshop, you'll see tea, coffee, chocolate, because who doesn't like to have a cup of tea or coffee or a piece of chocolate when you're reading a book?
So it makes sense in that particular sense.
But we'll really engage the shop network.
So we've got our own brand of chocolate called Bite to Fight.
Yeah? Belgian chocolate?
(35:05):
We're fortunate enough to be associated with Oxfam Belgium, who are very, very good at new product sales.
And of course, we work with them on the development of that product.
We've got our own marketplace, which generates a lot of traffic.
On one of our busiest weeks, we sold 25,000 individual items.
(35:31):
So marketing to that particular customer set obviously generates a really good level of income.
But then look at marketplaces.
So in the month of August, we generated almost 300 million impressions on our eBay shop.
(35:52):
So if eBay are doing TV advertising, radio advertising, high street media, et cetera, et cetera, they're basically getting people, shoppers, to their site.
All we have to do is make sure that the listing that we have is as visible and searchable as possible.
So we try and ride on some of eBay's traffic as well.
(36:16):
And that's a really good one to point out as a good example of how that really works.
That's great.
Andy, we've been chatting for over half an hour.
And I want to say thank you for giving us such a great insight into how...
And I feel like we've only touched the surface, but into the complexity that sits behind the surface of Oxfam, and how you actually make it sound like it's just really simple.
(36:49):
I'm astounded by it.
You touched there on building an AI bargaining potential tool there.
Maybe as we wrap up, could you tell us a little bit about what customers can expect to see from Oxfam over the next 12 months?
What have you got in your pipeline that's really interesting that you're going to make sound really easy, but in fact be incredibly complex?
(37:14):
We have an AI research and development group inside Oxfam.
And the people within that group come from all corners of the organisation.
So clearly, you've got fundraising as an example.
They're interested in AI.
Retail is very interested in AI.
(37:37):
And therefore, we meet on a regular basis.
We look at new concepts, new designs, what the offers are, what other organisations are doing.
And we kind of think, what if that worked for us?
How would that work inside our organisation?
And I think what we've done is we've gone out and we've looked at marketplaces.
(37:57):
And I have to say eBay, you can list something on eBay with the best offer.
It's quite easy, really.
So as a seller on eBay, you set the parameter of where you'd like to sell the item and how much discount you would be prepared to give away on making an offer.
(38:19):
And you invite those offers from potential shoppers.
And through a level of automation, because you've got your pre-determined pricing points set up, it doesn't matter if no one's in the office at four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon.
Your automated price point accepts an offer if it is within that...
(38:41):
Within your threshold.
Yeah, yeah.
So we are looking at something similar with the Oxfam online shop.
I have to say we're in very early stages of test-and-trial.
We might just introduce it on one category to see what happens.
We might introduce it over a very short time period.
(39:02):
But again, I think if you're not testing-and-trialing, you're not innovating.
So it's really important for us to have a look at what the new technologies are, what shopper behaviour and trends are, and make sure that we are current in that marketplace.
(39:25):
After all, it is a commercial offer.
There are some shoppers who will land on some of the marketplaces that we have and they will buy something from us.
They will have no idea they've just bought something from Oxfam until the item arrives and it's got a little thank you pack and sheet inside with the Oxfam logo on.
(39:45):
That might be the first time that they actually know that they've bought something from a charity.
So it's very interesting that you have to ensure you've got that commerciality, you've got that offer and you're current with customer shopper behaviour and trends.
Very, very true.
So proposition clarity.
Yeah, absolutely.
(40:06):
Andy, thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure to have you with us here today.
Thanks, Andy.
Super insights.
Thank you for joining us and sharing the story of Oxfam with us.
Very welcome.
Thanks for having me.
So Gordon, how did you find Andy?
I can't believe how complex that business actually is.
Three lines of business (40:30):
corporate, bought made by and the stores, and that they distribute fulfillment with 600 high-street stores, 20,000 people and it's all distributed.
Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it?
I mean, he kind of makes it sound reasonably easy or more, is not massively pleased with himself, kind of a thing.
(40:56):
You know, it's just, oh yeah, that's what we do.
We have that kind of reciprocal or bi-directional kind of sense of ownership and responsibility being handed and being divested into the network is actually huge as well.
Because I can guarantee you there would be a lot of people listening in who'd be thinking, well, listen to all the opportunity that they're probably missing.
(41:17):
But maybe there's no opportunity that they're missing.
Maybe this is exactly the way that they need to trust the store managers who have the expertise to decide what needs to be sold online and then they facilitate those store managers, help them to do the listing, help them to get the pricing and just allow the product... kind of get out of the way, I suppose.
(41:37):
Like 600 product listers, effectively.
Yeah.
And I think about that and think about the engagement level that Andy touched on there.
And I think, how would you, in a different retail organisation, bring that level of engagement to your store managers and to your sales teams in-store, and how wonderful it would be if you had that general level of engagement across, I was going to say across a commercial organisation, but Oxfam's clearly a commercial organisation, a for-profit organisation.
(42:15):
Because that's one of the big challenges that we see loads.
Yeah.
And there are the things, and he touched on it, and obviously with these episodes, we only get to talk to people for about a half an hour.
You know, there's so much in there.
But one of the things he touched on very briefly, and we kind of didn't even dive into it, is the fact that they are feeding back information about what is selling, what's on trend, what is...
(42:37):
So obviously there's reporting going back down, back over to the shops, which the shops can then use to make decisions about what they might want to list along with the shop's own expertise.
So, you know, that level of facilitating the stores with the right kind of KPIs or the right kind of information that the stores can then ladder up or can, let's say, optimize for, you know, that kind of information has to go backwards and forwards.
(43:05):
So there's obviously quite a decent set-up in the background to allow that kind of thing to happen.
And they've taken a very pragmatic approach to inventory management.
Very, yeah.
Because when I was thinking about, we were going to talk to somebody from Oxfam, I just couldn't wrap my head around the inventory management challenge.
(43:28):
And they've just taken a really pragmatic and simple approach to it.
Yeah.
Store manager, you decide what goes online, you decide what you sell in store.
Give it a list, you can swap it in, you can swap it out...
You call that simple, but I know years ago, a retailer in Ireland, when they went online, they had set aside the stock that would be available for sale online, put it in a separate kind of a warehouse, took it off the shop floor and listed it.
(43:59):
And lo and behold, none of it sold.
And what was selling was, I think, fake tan, shoulder pads and holy water fonts was what they were selling.
That sounds like the perfect Saturday night wardrobe...
Well, people were making jokes.
It was a lot of Mrs Doyles, basically, buying on the site.
So they basically had to bring all of the stock that they had set aside and bring it back onto the shop floor and sell it on the shop floor.
(44:25):
And then they had to wait to see what was actually selling online.
And it took them quite a while to get back to the situation where they're able to predict in a better way what the customers are coming online to buy and all of that kind of thing.
But obviously, the store managers in the Oxfam network must have a serious level of understanding of what they need to sell online, because that whole thing about, okay, we're going to take it, we're going to take it off the shop floor, we're going to put it in to one side and we're making our bet that we're going to sell that.
(45:00):
You can't really underline how big a responsibility and a decision...
The decision process that goes on there... But I guess that comes from knowing your store, knowing your customers, like, smell what sells and work out over time what products are most likely to be successful when traded online.
(45:22):
I think the example Andy used around books, super passionate volunteers managing the Oxfam bookstores.
I didn't know that Oxfam had dedicated bookstores in the UK.
I think that's brilliant.
I love a little charity store book rummage, because sometimes you'll get a cracker.
So their knowledge must be vast.
(45:45):
And I wonder, I'm kind of raging we didn't ask, I didn't think to ask the question when we were talking to him.
I wonder what store manager churn is like?
I'd say very low.
Like, do volunteers stay with Oxfam for a long time?
I'm sure they do.
And that's where you build your insight.
(46:06):
I think the answer is already there.
If they are successfully selling based on the experience and the expertise of the store managers and they're giving that responsibility to the store managers, I suspect the store managers are quite happy and the churn would be very low.
Yeah, I imagine it probably would be.
So then if we take this, and for me, this is a great one to take away and go, well, so what have we learned today?
(46:34):
And what can we take from the podcast this week where we could apply that in different for-profit organisations?
And I think the biggest takeaway for me is around engagement and working with your store managers when you're clear on what your proposition is.
(46:55):
The engagement of the team.
And there is definitely, we talk an awful lot about CX.
CX sells.
Customer experience.
Is it CX-y?
Yeah, yeah, customer experience.
Like there is also an EX, which is the employee experience.
And what is the employee experience of using the site to sell as a sales tool, as a sales assistant in-store, you know, with the endless aisle options and even the informational aspect, you know, you can lean on your ecommerce set-up to facilitate the in-store sales assistance to make sales, to do the cross-sell or the upsell and all of that sort of thing.
(47:40):
And there is an employee experience that's available to optimise, we'll say.
And we possibly don't talk about that enough.
And when you're thinking about it, just to your point on the team and how to engage the team, you know, when you say, okay, well, it's hard for us to do ship from store.
And then you can point at Oxfam and say, well, Oxfam are basically doing ship from store for 600 stores, you know.
(48:07):
Comfortably.
Comfortably. With 20,000 people involved potentially in the process, maybe.
You know, alongside then a 100,000-square foot distribution centre, you know.
They're doing okay.
They're doing okay, yeah, so...
We've talked about that before, though, haven't we?
It was on an earlier episode where we were just, like, why do business user systems and interfaces... Well, I think we talked about it in the context of B2B, but internal systems, like, whenever you're working somewhere, why are they always, like, really awful to look at and to use?
(48:48):
They never have, like, really lovely user interfaces for sales team members and employees to get stuck into.
And it's such an opportunity.
I mean, the potential is great when you have a tool that has all of the data in it.
And like the, let's say the KPIs, the benchmarking, all of that information is potentially, can potentially be exposed from your software and within the ecommerce platforms and so on.
(49:18):
And vendors, if you are listening, please, please make your back-end administration interfaces that merchandisers, sales teams, store managers... invest in EX.
Invest in EX.
Invest in EX.
It sounds like, it sounds like one of those, invest in Cork, invest in EX.
(49:42):
Well, on that note, investing in Cork, of course we're going to invest in Cork.
We need to get, like, a Cork Airport...
Okay, I'm not going to go on a rant at Cork Airport...
So I'm going to just stop right there before...
I enjoyed Cork Airport this morning...
No, Cork Airport, well, Cork Airport is, it is there to be enjoyed...
More people should be able to enjoy Cork Airport.
Therefore we need more flights in and out of Cork Airport...
(50:03):
Well, let's have a chat with Aer Lingus about that.
Or Ryanair, who could we talk to at Ryanair?
Ah, I wonder...
Thanks a million.
Great to have you with us again here today, Gordon.
It's great to be here.
And that was fun.
Thanks, Ger.
And thanks very much to the listeners.
Take care, everybody.
You've been listening to Functional & Fabulous with Ger Keohane and Gordon Newman.
(50:27):
If you'd like to know more about the podcast, or about StudioForty9 and Omnichannel Stories, please go to functionalandfabulous.ie. Our sound engineer was Elaine Smith, and the show was produced by Roger Overall.
This is Functional & Fabulous, the omnichannel podcast where we unbox tales of online retail and digital transformation.
In this episode... we talk an awful lot about CX.
Wait, what?
Is it CX-y?
No...
Invest in cork, invest in EX.
Lads, can we just stick to the topic, please?
The perfect Saturday night wardrobe...
(00:21):
Oh my God.
Fake tan, shoulder pads and holy water fonts.
What?
Why holy water?
You don't want to go down there with your metal t-shirts because you're really going to look out of place.
Okay, has anybody got anything to say about ecommerce?
Good question.
Erm...
This episode of Functional & Fabulous is brought to you with pride by StudioForty9,
(00:45):
retail ecommerce experts, omnichannel growth consultants and cut-through performance marketing specialists.
StudioForty9, where your digital retail success is built.
Hello, I'm delighted to welcome you to another episode of Functional & Fabulous and it's a pleasure to host Andy Ostcliffe today.
Andy has some serious retail chops having worked for John Lewis, the UK's favourite and most formidable retailer, for nearly four years before rising to the challenge of building up the ecommerce presence for the British Heart Foundation for a further four years.
(01:18):
And he's now Head of Ecommerce and Retail Innovation for Oxfam.
Andy, it's great to have you here today.
Hi Andy, welcome to the podcast.
A pleasure, Gordon and Gerard, thank you.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Tell us, you moved from traditional retail to ecommerce and charity.
Was that a big decision for you?
Yeah, kind of, yeah.
(01:38):
I have a background in ecommerce, something that I enjoyed as a bit of a hobby, which then turned into a business, which then outgrew the house.
I guess it was time then, really, to put that to good effect and where better to do it than a charity?
(01:59):
Brilliant.
So if we can dive into this.
So Andy, you're the first person that's been on the podcast that actually works with a charity, and I think it'd probably be a good framing question to start off with of, what's different about working in, I suppose, charity retail, if that's what we can call it, than working in a more traditional seasonal retailer?
(02:26):
Absolutely.
I think one of the main points that charity retailing offers is selection.
And boy, is that a retailer's answer.
But this is a selection that changes daily, weekly, I mean, sometimes hourly.
And the draw of the charity shop is, well, what have you got this week?
(02:52):
What's new?
Is there any bargains or collectibles that I'm looking for?
And for some of our shoppers and customers, it's actually a destination.
You do know there are people who go out onto the high street of, come on, we'll have a charity shop afternoon and they make it a kind of a retail event between themselves or friends and family and they go out shopping in charity shops.
(03:19):
So I think it's really interesting in being able to bring that unique offer to shoppers.
And then if you just expand that experience to online, whereas you might look at local football in a particular town or city where we've got one of our shops, expand that across online and suddenly you're reaching millions of people who are kind of going, hmm, I wonder what new you've got this week?
(03:47):
That's really interesting.
So selection, like, retailers love having lots and lots of product width, but I guess there's very little, if any, depth in the product that you're selling.
Would I be right in that assumption?
No, you'd be surprised.
So if you look at depth, we would look at depth in terms of maybe seasonality.
(04:14):
We can also look at depth in terms of corporate donations as well.
So we've got, at the moment, several thousands of pairs of new denim jeans, but across different styles.
So if you were shopping online and you're looking for a bit of bargain in terms of new denim jeans or jackets or swimsuits or t-shirts, et cetera, et cetera.
(04:43):
So the corporate donation element of the type of stock that we would carry online is really exciting for depth.
But certainly from that physical aspect of being in shop or store, that depth can be in seasonality.
But don't forget also, Gordon, that in terms of, you've then got the new product selection, which is still quite new for charity retailing.
(05:10):
So you've got the Sourced by Oxfam range, and that Sourced by Oxfam range covers four or five different brands of Fairtrade chocolate.
It's the same in tea and coffee.
And then it's all the products that we have from the producer groups around the world that we stock and supply, such as the I was a sari shopping bag.
(05:30):
So, no, it's beyond that singular item that might be a bargain or a bit of a collectible.
So you've got kind of three...
are we right then in our assumption that you've got kind of three?
You've got the made by Oxfam, corporate donations, and then the single items.
And that's how the proposition rounds out.
(05:52):
Absolutely, yes.
So what I'm really fascinated by, and if we can just park the corporate and the Sourced by Oxfam for a second, I'm really interested in how you manage those single items.
Because when we were first talking about, okay, we're going to meet Andy from Oxfam.
(06:12):
And I was thinking about how do you do production for these single items?
And I was just having palpitations at the thought of two things.
One is how do you do the photography product descriptions?
And then the second one was how on earth do you do, like, inventory accuracy and fulfillment?
(06:36):
So I was like, okay, wow.
They're two pretty big subjects, right?
Yeah, they're just a bit.
That's the entire operating model of what we do.
But okay, let's try and break it down into a couple of snapshots, really.
I'll give you some good examples.
So out of the building that's behind me, which is 100,000 square feet, it's in West Yorkshire, and it's where a number of our divisions are located.
(07:04):
One of those divisions will be our festivals team.
And traditionally, on a yearly basis, we will attend up to 12 festivals.
Leeds Festival, Download, and obviously Glastonbury being the largest.
And what that team will do is they will sort, they will curate for a specific festival.
(07:28):
So imagine, Royal Windsor is all about Dual, Barbour, Hunter wellies...
You don't want to go down there with heavy metal t-shirts because you're really going to look out of place.
So curating that particular offer, and it might be ranges of, it might be ranges of gilets, it might be ranges of jackets, it may be ranges of footwear, et cetera.
(07:50):
They will select and curate that product set for that specific event.
And of course, you've got other events where they will curate heavy metal t-shirts or surfwear, et cetera, et cetera.
So they're pretty good at doing that from this location.
I have to say the way that the majority of the individual items, in the way that they're listed, in the way that those particular items are curated, comes down to the expertise that we have within that shop network and volunteers.
(08:22):
So we're looking at almost 600 high street shops.
We've got more than 20,000 volunteers who thankfully give their time each week to Oxfam.
And we've been doing online at Oxfam since 2006 across our own marketplace, which is Oxfam online shop.
(08:44):
And those teams will be looking for various items of clothing, donations, which they feel would be quite interesting online.
And between those 600 shops, they collate that inventory on a weekly basis.
It's then exposed across our online shop.
(09:07):
So our inventory ranges on a typical week between 230,000 to 270,000 individual items.
You place your order on the online shop.
The shop themselves who have the item receive that order.
They do the packaging and postage, and that goes out to our customers.
(09:32):
So it's not as complicated as it sounds, although up to 270,000 items, which are all unique, you'd think, oh, why on earth are you going to try and find all that from in a big location, in a big warehouse?
The corporate donations work separately, but the individual ones, it all comes down to the expertise of colleagues and volunteers in shops.
(09:52):
It's the ultimate fulfil from store model.
Well, actually, it's the ultimate start in the store, like produce from store and fulfil from store.
So how do your volunteers, when they're adding a piece of content or when they're adding a product onto Oxfam Shop, have you just distributed your back end admin systems to say, whack in a photo there and whack in a product description?
(10:22):
There are standards, of course there are.
And there's some training and we've got colleagues.
It's just like any other shop network, even if you're in a commercial network, you'd have area managers and regional managers, et cetera.
And then, of course, there are people who work in the online team who can offer guidance and advice as well.
(10:45):
But generally, what our shops are doing is they're following a set of guidelines in terms of minimum number of pictures, type of description, and we've got our own listing tool.
So we will actually guide you through, almost like a template, we will guide you through that level of information that generally our buyers want to see or buyers want to see in terms of item specifics.
(11:11):
And then click a button and they can launch the listing onto that main site that we've got.
But of course, online shopping is changing almost weekly in terms of standards, in terms of customer trends.
So we will try and feed back into the network also top-selling items, which items are on trend, kind of fashions.
(11:37):
We've just gone through a period of back to school.
So children's clothing between the ages of 6 and 12 was on fire as a category in terms of how popular it was.
So if you've got some donations of school shoes that we can advertise, that we can list online, let's do that because it's a very popular category at this moment in time.
(11:59):
And can you tell us a little bit about how you manage the pricing for that?
I mean, you can set guidelines around the description that you're looking for and let's say attributes for filtering and photography and so on.
But who sets the price?
Who decides on the condition of this product as such that the price should be X, or this product in some cases, I guess, is valuable enough or rare enough that the price should be Y?
(12:27):
Can you talk us through that a bit?
Yeah, and pricing can be a challenge sometimes.
Generally, we're quite good at this.
So our colleagues in shop and volunteers will go out onto the marketplace.
We will use the places which are generally available, the vintage, the Depops, the eBays.
What's that item selling for?
(12:48):
And that will give us a guide.
I'll not give you the exact calculation, but that will give us some guidance as to what that particular item is valued at.
And if we follow that guidance, we've got a pretty good chance of selling the item.
We are experimenting with some automated pricing.
(13:08):
So we're looking at how we can automate pricing and we can get a little bit more streamlined, more minute-by-minute information in terms of data and trends on how things are selling.
And equally, we're looking at some AI that we can introduce into our own site that maybe gives the customer an option to do some kind of interaction with us in terms of suggestive pricing.
(13:32):
So you might find on eBay, you can make an offer.
I'm not saying we're there at the moment, but we're certainly experimenting with that type of technology to see if it's possible.
A haggling tool...
Haggling with your local Oxfam. One question, because I know that some of the people that Ger and I would work with on our travels will be still having palpitations now around 250,000 SKUs, but also inventory integrity there of when something is sold in the store, how does it then get taken off the website?
(14:14):
Delving into a good bit of detail.
Yeah, really good question.
I can go into one of our shops and I can start talking to the shop manager and the volunteers and say, show me where you do online.
Because every shop's got a little place where they do online.
They've got their computer set-up.
(14:34):
They've got their digital camera.
This is our online stock, Andy.
This is what we're selling this week.
This is what's coming.
So from an inventory perspective, they've got, they've separated off that stock.
It's not a case of those Levi 501s that are on a hanger in the shop are also online because trying to manage that would be quite complicated.
(14:57):
But certainly what we will do is we will separate the stock.
So this is online stock and this is in-shop stock.
I think quite complicated is possibly one of the most understated statements we've had because the complexity of that.
I was trying to understand that.
That's a lot of omnichannel complexity.
(15:19):
So the store separating that out is really interesting.
So do you then see that stores start to get a bit competitive with each other?
We do.
And where I see some of the competition is from our bookshops.
So Oxfam has 120 dedicated books and music shops.
(15:42):
Sometimes you'll find them in the same town as what we class as a standard shop, which is a clothing and new product shop.
But they tend to be very, very competitive.
And I have to say the knowledge that is within those bookshops is phenomenal.
So yes, you will have a particular bookshop that is very good at online.
(16:06):
It's a very slick streamlined process.
Books are generally quite small.
So they're easy to handle.
They're easy to list.
They're easy to store.
And they're easy to dispatch.
So our bookshops are really good at online.
And indeed, that's where you see a lot of the competition in that respect.
And are they also separating out the stock?
(16:26):
I mean, I presume not for the books. Really?
Absolutely, yeah.
And how are they making that choice?
I mean, even in a, let's say, a traditional retailer, you know, you're selling off the shop floor.
And, you know, it gives certain challenges because even when you put away the items in the store because they have been reserved or they're reserved for collection, you'll see sometimes store assistants selling them to customers who are coming in because that's what we have in the store.
(16:53):
And it's very hard to deny a sale.
How is that operating in the stores for Oxfam?
Okay, I cannot underestimate the expertise of the bookshop manager.
It is phenomenal.
You can be with one of these book experts and they can literally go, yep, that one, that one, and we'll sell that one.
(17:15):
And we'll put that one online as well.
It's just like, how do you know?
And maybe it's particularly a good publication in terms of crime fiction.
It can be at particular times of year recipe books.
It can be authors who are particularly popular.
(17:36):
They have almost a fixed sense of what looks really good in terms of book stock for online.
But we also do something quite interesting as well is that if you imagine the volume of books that we are shifting on a weekly basis, books at Oxfam in terms of our sales...
(17:58):
In terms of our online sales, books is worth about £3 million a year.
So it's a big category for us.
And we're able to use a back catalogue of books that we have sold previously.
So scan a book, gives you some details about it.
Have we sold it before?
(18:18):
What price did we sell it at before?
Click this.
So I think in that sense, we try and put some automation into that aspect as well.
But we're very reliant on that local knowledge.
And so if an item isn't moving in store, for example, are you moving it online and vice versa?
Are they looking at stock from that level?
(18:39):
Or does the item sell reasonably fast?
Is there an expectation that if I put a book online, it's going to sell within two weeks?
It's just like a commercial business, really, Gerard.
So different shops operate in different mechanisms.
(19:00):
There are particular titles that will attract customers to come into the shop and have a look.
And maybe it's a good in-shop or in-store sale.
Or if you're wanting to shift volume, it's online.
And the bookshop manager and the team that work within that shop will decide, are we going to put it out on the shop floor first and see if it sells in the first two weeks?
(19:25):
If not, should we put it online and give it a go there?
Other shops go, yep, that's definitely online.
Right, we'll put that lot online and we'll move the rest of the inventory through the shop.
We really do give that sense of empowerment to our shop managers.
It's their business.
They know their town.
They know their local customers.
(19:46):
They know what sells.
So why not empower them to make that decision and move the stock to the channel that's going to give us the best revenue and income, really?
I think that's fantastic.
I also think about some of the other types of businesses that we've worked with.
And they have real challenges mobilising their store teams.
(20:11):
And there's a lot of talk of channel cannibalisation.
That conversation is still happening.
I wish it would just end.
And resistance from store colleagues.
But what it sounds like you've done really successfully is engage those 20,000 volunteers to have the ultimate distributed team working on online.
(20:36):
How have you even done that?
It's spectacular.
It comes down to, I'd like to think it's a level of engagement that we have that's bi-directional between Oxfam and our volunteers.
Our volunteers will often say how much they enjoy working in the shop.
(20:59):
Sometimes it comes down to even the shop manager.
You know, I love working for the shop manager.
And the way that the shop manager looks after that team of volunteers is sometimes underestimated as well.
But ultimately, online is part of the shop's revenue and income.
And certainly what we've seen at Oxfam just over the last 18 months is where our revenues from online is seriously growing.
(21:29):
Now, you can look at your shop figures on a weekly basis.
As a shop manager, you can kind of see where that growth is coming from.
Both in-shop and online.
So if you're selling more online, there's almost like an encouragement, a camaraderie.
Wow, this is great.
(21:50):
Customers love it.
We love it.
And it generates income.
So I think in that sense, it's very engaging.
And there was an instance not so long ago where we started introducing eBay into one of our listing locations.
And I can remember initially some friction on selling on that particular platform.
(22:14):
We've done it before.
We've tried it.
And we know it won't work.
We put that team through some very specific training.
eBay helped us themselves.
And I was down in that location about six weeks later.
I literally had people running up to me and saying, you'll never guess what we've sold.
You'll never guess how much it sold for.
(22:35):
And that team were going home on an evening and watching on their mobile phones, items ending on auction.
Coming in the next day, the next morning, it was all about, did you see what we sold last night?
How much it sold for?
You can't train that.
I wish we could bottle it.
You can't train that.
But that sense of involvement, that sense of wow and wonderment is what those teams themselves build.
(23:07):
And it's fantastic to see that as a creation.
I can think of a few retailers that would really love to have that level of engagement and that level of commerciality built into their store teams.
But it also has to be, as Andy is saying, bi-directional because I can equally imagine, sometimes it can be hard to imagine how much wider your catalogue, your selection could be online, even though it's already very, very wide, but how much wider it could be.
(23:36):
And to trust in the opinion and the expertise of the person running the store to say, okay, we're not going to sell that online.
I could definitely imagine a lot of people saying, no, no, we must rush to get everything online.
That's our best way to sell it.
So there's definitely, you can see, there's definitely a sense of the bi-directionality of that.
(23:57):
Tell us a little bit more about the eBay side of things.
When you list a product up on the Oxfam store, your own kind of online store, is it then also listed on eBay or do you select which items to curate and list on eBay?
How do you do that side of things?
Good question.
We have generally a model at the moment where our shops will list a lot or almost all of our pre-loved donated items will be sold on Oxfam's online shop.
(24:29):
That's our own online shop.
What we do with eBay is the two major hubs that we've got, one in West Yorkshire, the other one is in Milton Keynes.
We have independent, well, they're part of Oxfam, but they're independent of the shop network, listing teams.
(24:50):
Those listing teams can en masse list corporate donations.
It's really interesting.
You get the list once and you may have got 1,500 pairs of the same jeans, but they're all in different sizes.
You do a really good job of the first listing.
You've got all your pictures up there.
You've got all your item specifics.
(25:13):
Then you just let the listing sell 1,500 pairs of jeans.
It's the space that you need rather than the people, power, time that it needs to list that.
That works particularly well.
We sell a full range of corporate donated items.
We have some items that come into these particular locations, which are either collectable, they can be quite unique, and we'll list those items as well on eBay.
(25:44):
For instance, it's Second-Hand September for Oxfam.
It's the flagship retail event in our calendar year.
We're exposing up to 6,000 individual items on our eBay page for Second-Hand September, complementing our Oxfam online shop offer, because we know that customers shop in different locations at different times, favouring different platforms, et cetera.
(26:17):
So the ethos of that and the rationale is be where your customer is.
So if you're operating on a different platform, we'll try and catch your attention.
But we've also started selling the new product on various platforms as well.
And a real surprise for us, which is a pleasant surprise, we started to sell wholesale Sourced by Oxfam products across the eBay platform.
(26:46):
So you can buy wholesale packs of Fairtrade tea, coffee, chocolate, Christmas cards.
So we offer a full range of Sourced by Oxfam products across that particular platform as well.
I love that we've been talking about eBay.
We've had a guest on the podcast from eBay before who talked about sustainability and talked about the importance of people buying less to create less landfill.
(27:18):
And Oxfam are kind of in this space.
As a general kind of trend, are you seeing that people are buying more pre-loved or is that something that hasn't registered with Oxfam?
But I suppose the question is, are you riding off the back of a sustainability wave there?
(27:42):
That's a good question.
Our relationship that we have with eBay is fantastic.
If you look at earlier on this year, eBay joined Oxfam for the launch of London Fashion Show.
So on the eve of the opening of London Fashion Show in a studio in Soho, we had celebrities and influencers walking down a catwalk with pre-loved fashion, of which those items were then auctioned on eBay.
(28:22):
And I think to look at that event in its entirety, fantastic that we were able to receive from those sales of those pre-loved items that had been down the catwalk an awful lot of interest.
And that generated some really interesting sales for us.
(28:42):
But it also generated almost 700 pieces of news, television interviews, radio, press coverage, influencers.
So in terms of, are we creating the story or are we just riding on the back of a trend around pre-loved fashion?
(29:03):
I could use that example to say, we're actually creating the story rather than follow it.
And to put that into some kind of context, Second-Hand September for Oxfam this year, we're in our fifth year of Second-Hand September.
Last year, we saw the highest sales that we've seen in the history of Oxfam from the high street on the back of Second-Hand September.
(29:33):
So we're clearly connecting and we're clearly being able to put across a message in that second-hand doesn't need to be second-best.
Got it.
I love that.
Second-hand is not second-best.
What you've explained to us here this afternoon it's really going through this wonderful distributed team that you've got.
(29:56):
You've got these three great business areas.
And one of the questions that's floating around my head is, how big a centralised team do you need to run something like this?
Team size is something that we talk about a lot.
We're often of the view that everybody needs more merchandisers.
Everybody needs more product listers.
(30:17):
Everyone needs more marketeers.
Do you have a big old central team running this, Andy?
I wouldn't say they're central anymore.
I'd say they're all over the place in terms of different locations.
So, yes is the answer.
But in terms of where they reside, clearly Yorkshire, then Milton Keynes, then in Oxford, in terms of where those team locations are.
(30:44):
What's a really good example to pick out here in terms of team size?
Sourced by Oxfam, new goods.
And you probably think sometimes new goods within a charity might be the odd key ring or the pound coin that you put in a shopping trolley.
But that range that Oxfam has is around 1,200, 1,300 different items.
(31:08):
And it varies from foods to board games to some of the producer communities that we support overseas and sell their products through our shop network.
That business is worth in sales revenue £15 million this year.
So, sizable.
Yes, a business in its own sense.
(31:30):
And will be supported by a team of buyers, merchandisers.
We've got specialist audit and ethical teams in there.
You just don't come to Oxfam and say, hey, we've got a great product.
Would you like to sell it?
We want to know where it's come from?
We want to know who's produced it?
(31:51):
We want to know what packaging it's in?
We want to know how it's getting here?
We want to know if you're paying a living wage?
We want to know who owns the company, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
That Sourced by Oxfam tag means something.
And to support that, there's a team just in that particular location in excess of 20 individuals who make that magic happen.
(32:17):
Then you've got the distribution, the logistics, the ship, PickPack and Dispatch that supports that.
And customer services to look after any queries or returns, et cetera.
They can be quite sizable teams, but it's based on what the business generates.
That makes a lot of sense.
(32:38):
And so you really are running a traditional ecommerce business, if you like, alongside the other business lines that you have.
Yeah.
And I wonder how challenging does that make marketing?
You know, are you kind of mainly marketing to your customer as, you know, to that person who wants to come back week after week to see what's new in Oxfam this week?
(33:04):
What bargains or what finds might I discover?
Or are you marketing at the product level to try and sell the products that you have?
Or are you marketing at, let's say, the business line level to market the Sourced by Oxfam?
You know, does that make it complicated for you?
Or how do you approach it?
(33:25):
It's an interesting vehicle that we have and we use in order to promote, brand, cause, programme and retail.
And again, another big specialist team are very good at what they do.
If you look at Second-Hand September last year, as an example, we had 67 influencers who engaged with that retail event.
(33:56):
And that reached an audience of three million people.
We received 32,000 new opted in supporters to Oxfam's database.
And of course, we've then got social.
So we're on all the main platforms in terms of a social appearance as well.
(34:19):
And those are great.
But if you look at, well then, okay, but you've got a new product, how do you tell people you've got a new product?
A lot of our customers who are coming into our physical shop network will make a donated purchase and they will make a new goods purchase as well.
So for instance, we try and complement the new goods product set to ranges that we have in shops.
(34:45):
So if you go into a bookshop, you'll see tea, coffee, chocolate, because who doesn't like to have a cup of tea or coffee or a piece of chocolate when you're reading a book?
So it makes sense in that particular sense.
But we'll really engage the shop network.
So we've got our own brand of chocolate called Bite to Fight.
Yeah? Belgian chocolate?
(35:05):
We're fortunate enough to be associated with Oxfam Belgium, who are very, very good at new product sales.
And of course, we work with them on the development of that product.
We've got our own marketplace, which generates a lot of traffic.
On one of our busiest weeks, we sold 25,000 individual items.
(35:31):
So marketing to that particular customer set obviously generates a really good level of income.
But then look at marketplaces.
So in the month of August, we generated almost 300 million impressions on our eBay shop.
(35:52):
So if eBay are doing TV advertising, radio advertising, high street media, et cetera, et cetera, they're basically getting people, shoppers, to their site.
All we have to do is make sure that the listing that we have is as visible and searchable as possible.
So we try and ride on some of eBay's traffic as well.
(36:16):
And that's a really good one to point out as a good example of how that really works.
That's great.
Andy, we've been chatting for over half an hour.
And I want to say thank you for giving us such a great insight into how...
And I feel like we've only touched the surface, but into the complexity that sits behind the surface of Oxfam, and how you actually make it sound like it's just really simple.
(36:49):
I'm astounded by it.
You touched there on building an AI bargaining potential tool there.
Maybe as we wrap up, could you tell us a little bit about what customers can expect to see from Oxfam over the next 12 months?
What have you got in your pipeline that's really interesting that you're going to make sound really easy, but in fact be incredibly complex?
(37:14):
We have an AI research and development group inside Oxfam.
And the people within that group come from all corners of the organisation.
So clearly, you've got fundraising as an example.
They're interested in AI.
Retail is very interested in AI.
(37:37):
And therefore, we meet on a regular basis.
We look at new concepts, new designs, what the offers are, what other organisations are doing.
And we kind of think, what if that worked for us?
How would that work inside our organisation?
And I think what we've done is we've gone out and we've looked at marketplaces.
(37:57):
And I have to say eBay, you can list something on eBay with the best offer.
It's quite easy, really.
So as a seller on eBay, you set the parameter of where you'd like to sell the item and how much discount you would be prepared to give away on making an offer.
(38:19):
And you invite those offers from potential shoppers.
And through a level of automation, because you've got your pre-determined pricing points set up, it doesn't matter if no one's in the office at four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon.
Your automated price point accepts an offer if it is within that...
(38:41):
Within your threshold.
Yeah, yeah.
So we are looking at something similar with the Oxfam online shop.
I have to say we're in very early stages of test-and-trial.
We might just introduce it on one category to see what happens.
We might introduce it over a very short time period.
(39:02):
But again, I think if you're not testing-and-trialing, you're not innovating.
So it's really important for us to have a look at what the new technologies are, what shopper behaviour and trends are, and make sure that we are current in that marketplace.
(39:25):
After all, it is a commercial offer.
There are some shoppers who will land on some of the marketplaces that we have and they will buy something from us.
They will have no idea they've just bought something from Oxfam until the item arrives and it's got a little thank you pack and sheet inside with the Oxfam logo on.
(39:45):
That might be the first time that they actually know that they've bought something from a charity.
So it's very interesting that you have to ensure you've got that commerciality, you've got that offer and you're current with customer shopper behaviour and trends.
Very, very true.
So proposition clarity.
Yeah, absolutely.
(40:06):
Andy, thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure to have you with us here today.
Thanks, Andy.
Super insights.
Thank you for joining us and sharing the story of Oxfam with us.
Very welcome.
Thanks for having me.
So Gordon, how did you find Andy?
I can't believe how complex that business actually is.
Three lines of business (40:30):
corporate, bought made by and the stores, and that they distribute fulfillment with 600 high-street stores, 20,000 people and it's all distributed.
Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it?
I mean, he kind of makes it sound reasonably easy or more, is not massively pleased with himself, kind of a thing.
(40:56):
You know, it's just, oh yeah, that's what we do.
We have that kind of reciprocal or bi-directional kind of sense of ownership and responsibility being handed and being divested into the network is actually huge as well.
Because I can guarantee you there would be a lot of people listening in who'd be thinking, well, listen to all the opportunity that they're probably missing.
(41:17):
But maybe there's no opportunity that they're missing.
Maybe this is exactly the way that they need to trust the store managers who have the expertise to decide what needs to be sold online and then they facilitate those store managers, help them to do the listing, help them to get the pricing and just allow the product... kind of get out of the way, I suppose.
(41:37):
Like 600 product listers, effectively.
Yeah.
And I think about that and think about the engagement level that Andy touched on there.
And I think, how would you, in a different retail organisation, bring that level of engagement to your store managers and to your sales teams in-store, and how wonderful it would be if you had that general level of engagement across, I was going to say across a commercial organisation, but Oxfam's clearly a commercial organisation, a for-profit organisation.
(42:15):
Because that's one of the big challenges that we see loads.
Yeah.
And there are the things, and he touched on it, and obviously with these episodes, we only get to talk to people for about a half an hour.
You know, there's so much in there.
But one of the things he touched on very briefly, and we kind of didn't even dive into it, is the fact that they are feeding back information about what is selling, what's on trend, what is...
(42:37):
So obviously there's reporting going back down, back over to the shops, which the shops can then use to make decisions about what they might want to list along with the shop's own expertise.
So, you know, that level of facilitating the stores with the right kind of KPIs or the right kind of information that the stores can then ladder up or can, let's say, optimize for, you know, that kind of information has to go backwards and forwards.
(43:05):
So there's obviously quite a decent set-up in the background to allow that kind of thing to happen.
And they've taken a very pragmatic approach to inventory management.
Very, yeah.
Because when I was thinking about, we were going to talk to somebody from Oxfam, I just couldn't wrap my head around the inventory management challenge.
(43:28):
And they've just taken a really pragmatic and simple approach to it.
Yeah.
Store manager, you decide what goes online, you decide what you sell in store.
Give it a list, you can swap it in, you can swap it out...
You call that simple, but I know years ago, a retailer in Ireland, when they went online, they had set aside the stock that would be available for sale online, put it in a separate kind of a warehouse, took it off the shop floor and listed it.
(43:59):
And lo and behold, none of it sold.
And what was selling was, I think, fake tan, shoulder pads and holy water fonts was what they were selling.
That sounds like the perfect Saturday night wardrobe...
Well, people were making jokes.
It was a lot of Mrs Doyles, basically, buying on the site.
So they basically had to bring all of the stock that they had set aside and bring it back onto the shop floor and sell it on the shop floor.
(44:25):
And then they had to wait to see what was actually selling online.
And it took them quite a while to get back to the situation where they're able to predict in a better way what the customers are coming online to buy and all of that kind of thing.
But obviously, the store managers in the Oxfam network must have a serious level of understanding of what they need to sell online, because that whole thing about, okay, we're going to take it, we're going to take it off the shop floor, we're going to put it in to one side and we're making our bet that we're going to sell that.
(45:00):
You can't really underline how big a responsibility and a decision...
The decision process that goes on there... But I guess that comes from knowing your store, knowing your customers, like, smell what sells and work out over time what products are most likely to be successful when traded online.
(45:22):
I think the example Andy used around books, super passionate volunteers managing the Oxfam bookstores.
I didn't know that Oxfam had dedicated bookstores in the UK.
I think that's brilliant.
I love a little charity store book rummage, because sometimes you'll get a cracker.
So their knowledge must be vast.
(45:45):
And I wonder, I'm kind of raging we didn't ask, I didn't think to ask the question when we were talking to him.
I wonder what store manager churn is like?
I'd say very low.
Like, do volunteers stay with Oxfam for a long time?
I'm sure they do.
And that's where you build your insight.
(46:06):
I think the answer is already there.
If they are successfully selling based on the experience and the expertise of the store managers and they're giving that responsibility to the store managers, I suspect the store managers are quite happy and the churn would be very low.
Yeah, I imagine it probably would be.
So then if we take this, and for me, this is a great one to take away and go, well, so what have we learned today?
(46:34):
And what can we take from the podcast this week where we could apply that in different for-profit organisations?
And I think the biggest takeaway for me is around engagement and working with your store managers when you're clear on what your proposition is.
(46:55):
The engagement of the team.
And there is definitely, we talk an awful lot about CX.
CX sells.
Customer experience.
Is it CX-y?
Yeah, yeah, customer experience.
Like there is also an EX, which is the employee experience.
And what is the employee experience of using the site to sell as a sales tool, as a sales assistant in-store, you know, with the endless aisle options and even the informational aspect, you know, you can lean on your ecommerce set-up to facilitate the in-store sales assistance to make sales, to do the cross-sell or the upsell and all of that sort of thing.
(47:40):
And there is an employee experience that's available to optimise, we'll say.
And we possibly don't talk about that enough.
And when you're thinking about it, just to your point on the team and how to engage the team, you know, when you say, okay, well, it's hard for us to do ship from store.
And then you can point at Oxfam and say, well, Oxfam are basically doing ship from store for 600 stores, you know.
(48:07):
Comfortably.
Comfortably. With 20,000 people involved potentially in the process, maybe.
You know, alongside then a 100,000-square foot distribution centre, you know.
They're doing okay.
They're doing okay, yeah, so...
We've talked about that before, though, haven't we?
It was on an earlier episode where we were just, like, why do business user systems and interfaces... Well, I think we talked about it in the context of B2B, but internal systems, like, whenever you're working somewhere, why are they always, like, really awful to look at and to use?
(48:48):
They never have, like, really lovely user interfaces for sales team members and employees to get stuck into.
And it's such an opportunity.
I mean, the potential is great when you have a tool that has all of the data in it.
And like the, let's say the KPIs, the benchmarking, all of that information is potentially, can potentially be exposed from your software and within the ecommerce platforms and so on.
(49:18):
And vendors, if you are listening, please, please make your back-end administration interfaces that merchandisers, sales teams, store managers... invest in EX.
Invest in EX.
Invest in EX.
It sounds like, it sounds like one of those, invest in Cork, invest in EX.
(49:42):
Well, on that note, investing in Cork, of course we're going to invest in Cork.
We need to get, like, a Cork Airport...
Okay, I'm not going to go on a rant at Cork Airport...
So I'm going to just stop right there before...
I enjoyed Cork Airport this morning...
No, Cork Airport, well, Cork Airport is, it is there to be enjoyed...
More people should be able to enjoy Cork Airport.
Therefore we need more flights in and out of Cork Airport...
(50:03):
Well, let's have a chat with Aer Lingus about that.
Or Ryanair, who could we talk to at Ryanair?
Ah, I wonder...
Thanks a million.
Great to have you with us again here today, Gordon.
It's great to be here.
And that was fun.
Thanks, Ger.
And thanks very much to the listeners.
Take care, everybody.
You've been listening to Functional & Fabulous with Ger Keohane and Gordon Newman.
(50:27):
If you'd like to know more about the podcast, or about StudioForty9 and Omnichannel Stories, please go to functionalandfabulous.ie. Our sound engineer was Elaine Smith, and the show was produced by Roger Overall.
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