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A new online store that donates a percentage of all its profits to community charities and good causes has been set up by a Warkworth marketing and advertising agent.
GIVT – or Gifts That Give Back – is the brainchild of Grant Henderson of Free Range Media, who wanted to find a way to put retail profits back into community groups, charities and clubs.
“My wife’s on the PTA at Warkworth School and I know how much effort goes into fundraising by a small amount of people,” he says. “So I thought of this idea of passive fundraising through an online store.”
With a background in international web development that includes setting up internet shopping for Australian department store David Jones and online ticketing for Jetstar, it wasn’t too long before Grant came up with the GIVT website.
It features around 100 diverse items for babies, kids, men, women and the home, from wooden toothbrushes and watches through to fitness gear and fairy lights, with an emphasis on sustainability.
“I’ve been looking for products that I think are contemporary and appealing, a lot of eco-friendly stuff, and products that are harder to get up here,” Grant says.
He sources items wholesale, checks samples for quality, discusses a reasonable retail price with the supplier and builds in GST and shipping costs. Then, when an item is sold on GIVT, 80 per cent of the profit goes to the community and 20 per cent to cover the cost of running and promoting the site. Customers choose the good cause they want their money to go to, or can add their own favourite charity to the site when they pay.
Grant is also looking for local producers to sell their goods on the site.
“I wanted to create an open platform where anyone within reason can add products or any organisation benefit,” he says. “We want more local stock. If you’re producing something round here, you get to shift a bit more production and are also directing money back into the community.”
Grant says funds will initially be distributed monthly to recipients and updates on who has received what will be posted on the GIVT website.
Info: givt.co.nz or GIVT on Facebook
