New Financial Year, Doing good together & GroceryAid Gold winner
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Published 2 Feb 2024 in Phil's blog
Following a positive end to the financial year, I would like to begin this week’s blog with an update on general member trade as well as our encouraging performances in Food and Travel…
Members are central to our strategy, so you will regularly see an update in my blog around this. It forms one of our key steering wheel measures and as a reminder is the percentage of transactions we have with members rather than non-members. Our goal for 2023/24 was to get to 35% member trade across the Society and I’m delighted to be able to report that we have exceeded that. In particular, in our Food business, we closed the financial year at 36% member trade – which is a fantastic achievement. That means that our Society member trade will also be just over 36% once it is published. An incredible achievement that has seen it increase by 9 percentage points in a year!
From a membership viewpoint, we also welcomed 108,000 new members to Your Co-op. This is quite an increase from the 86,000 who joined last year and 44,000 who joined in 2019 (this is the baseline we used before the pandemic and before our member first strategic focus).
These achievements are a tribute to the way we have worked together across the Society with everyone playing their part. Whether you were in Trading or Marketing designing the membership programme, keeping the proposition fresh and communicating with members. Or whether you were on the front line asking members for their cards and encouraging them to sign up – you have all played a part in making this happen. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication.
Our next target is to get to 40% member trade by the end of this year. We will be continuing to refine our value for members and making their experience more personal. In May we will be launching our community proposition, which will use the first 1000 points members earn to fund good causes in their community. So every time a member spends with us they will be able to see the difference they are making in their community.
Let’s keep doing good together…
Travel sales in Peaks
Over in Travel, we marked Peaks with some great sales too. With over £102M from our Retail, Consortium, Virtual Travel experts and Personal Travel Agents (PTA) all hitting their targets. The latter hit the £70M mark for the year for the first time, which was fantastic to hear. Overall holiday demand was driven by the competitive tour operator landscape, which drove strong consumer demand using discounts and incentives. From a holiday perspective, Majorca, Spain and Dalaman, Turkey are the places to be for Summer 2024 departures!
Happy customers in Coventry Travel after booking a cruise away!
Our tour operator, Co-op Holidays broke records too, for the highest ever weekly sales intake twice in the period with an all-time high of £560K hit in week 52. A growing brand for Travel, I am sure many of you are now excited to start booking those Summer 2024 getaways…
Doing good together – Raising over £25,000 for Food banks and supporting school holiday & food activities(HAF)
Putting the community at the heart of what we do, I was pleased to hear that we raised over £25,000 as part of the Christmas Food Bank appeal. Continuing to do good together and help those that need it the most; members and customers dropped off essential items into food bank collection boxes as well as the usual donation at till points. However this year it was combined with shoppers purchasing a reusable shopping bag for 70p, with all proceeds from the profit of the sales donated to the Food Bank Fund.
It’s a great example of how our members directly impact our communities with every shop, where the total was £5,000 more than in 2023. Gratefully welcomed by our Food bank partners, this will now be equally distributed during the most challenging time of the year. A thank you to all the colleagues involved in making this such a success again, have a listen to a few thank you messages from our partners.
Staying on the topic of doing good together, it was great to see Knighton Food store’s Peter Leach update on our Holiday and Food Activities (HAF) programme. Born out of footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign on providing school meals for children over the holiday periods, our regions continue to support the cause with multiple donations of food to local families in need. A big thank you to Peter and the team for making this a success once again. If you missed it, watch it below.
We are GroceryAid Gold Award winners!
Last week I received the great news of being awarded Gold in the GroceryAid awards for the third year running. This is a fantastic achievement which recognises our continued strong partnership and support with the charity, GroceryAid. They provide help across the entire retail industry, with a wide range of services available to colleagues and their families, including mental health support, face-to-face counselling, and financial grants. So, if you require it, there is support available for any colleague in need. To find out more, click here.
Meeting with the Police & Crime Commissioner for West Midlands Police
As we continue to combat retail crime, yesterday we met at the Birmingham Police HQ with Simon Foster, Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands, along with representatives from the West Midlands Police, USDAW and the Violence Reduction Partnership. In our third meeting in six months, we all agreed that good progress had been made. We looked at what further actions needed to be taken to prevent retail crime.
Meeting Simon Foster, Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands and representatives from the West Midlands Police, USDAW and the Violence Reduction Partnership at the Birmingham Police HQ
This included a campaign to highlight how the sale of products stolen from our stores is fuelling the increase in violence and that the people buying the products or the proprietors of the premises allowing the sale of goods are in themselves committing criminal offences and should face sanctions. I would also highlight the support from our trade union USDAW. Their national organiser, Jayne Allport, attended the meeting along with our very own branch manager and USDAW representative, Shell Whitehead, who has long campaigned for better rights for shop workers.
Inclusion Allies Network – first meeting
It was my absolute pleasure to be invited to join the inaugural meeting of the Inclusion Allies Network and to say a few words to the assembled representatives from across the Society. I reiterated how proud I am of them as a group and congratulated them on stepping forward to work on such an important area. I told them how vital it is that our Society embraces views and ideas from every section of our colleague community and that as a leader, I along with my senior colleagues are continually challenged to improve diversity and ensure that everyone has a voice which is heard. Please take some time to read about the group and what they are aiming to achieve here.
Fairer Living Festival & AGM 2024
Following the success of last year’s festival, I have an important date for your diaries. The Fairer Living Festival & AGM will take place on Saturday 11May at the Bescot Stadium in Walsall. I will share more details on the day in due course.
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