During this year’s ‘Sustainable Fashion Week’ (running between 25th September – 5th October), the St Ann’s Online Dept. took part in the ‘Ultimate Scanathon’ by Shopiago. With the chance to win a £100 voucher as well as a £100 donation to St Ann’s for scanning the most items within the two week time frame, everyone was keen to get involved and grab a barcode scanner. From a van driver to the merchandiser, *almost* everyone that stepped through the door of our Distribution Centre within that time at some point had a scanner and book/cd/dvd in hand to try and win the prize. We even had one volunteer back from France for the day! Safe to say that day was spent scanning, he probably couldn’t wait to get back on that return flight and not see a book again after that shift!
The St Ann’s Scans team came in third in the end, scanning a whopping 4787 out of over 90,000 items scanned by all participants, being pipped to the top spot by teams at Blythswood Care and Sue Ryder, earning a unique gamer tag as our prize.
Even though we came third, we are all still pretty happy with that, after all you can’t win every time. We did win on the 2 previous (must admit shorter) occasions, earning 2 x £50 donations directly to the Hospice as well as over £1000 worth from the values of the trades from the 3 competitions as well as giving them a chance to clear out stock and of course show off the great teamwork that happens behind the scenes.
Shopiago is a service provided by World of Books that enables charities to sell their donated items online across various platforms. The ‘Scanathon’ competition came as part of the Shopiago Trade In platform, similar to Music Magpie or Ziffit but especially for charities. The team use this Trade In platform to rehome any media (Books/CDs/DVDs) that has either been left unsold from our various shops/online sales channels or that wouldn’t be suitable for sale in our shops for any reason varying from overstock of a single item, to the condition of the item being not quite up to scratch (no pun intended). It is a great way for us to keep the circle going and reduce the waste that we produce, as well as making money for the Hospice at the same time.
If you have any media donations you want to make, get in touch with your local shop, you never know, you may well be providing us with the next lot of winning scans. The Online Team will be back to scanning when the next competition becomes available and will be looking to reclaim their title!
If you or anyone you know wants to join the Online team, fill out a volunteer application form here.
https://www.sah.org.uk/get-involved/volunteering/register-interest-become-volunteer/