(no subject)

[webofevil]

Many years ago a friend of mine was doing some marketing work for Coke. Despite already being the World’s Favourite Drink, its ambition is almost Bond-villain sinister. When a family sees that the milk in its fridge is shortly to run out, it has observed, they make sure to replace it before they ever go without. The Coca-Cola Company genuinely will not be satisfied until you do the same with Coke, and its executives are childishly baffled that most people (bar the Beckhams) don’t already. ^[1]

I was reminded of this last week when talking to someone who had overheard a conversation. (This, obviously, is a chain of attribution that I would not expect to stand up in a court of law but, as my source had no reason to lie, for now it’s good enough for the court of me.) He had heard two senior managers from Oxfam talking about their expanding bookshop chain—that’s the bookshops that don’t pay for their stock, pay little or no rates and secure high-street locations—and one of them said cheerfully that it was Oxfam’s ambition to put every other second-hand bookshop out of business. With its inbuilt advantages over actual booksellers, it just could.

Were that ever to happen, it would lead to the kind of monopoly that makes the OFT start sniffing around—but what the hell are charity execs doing thinking like Coke in the first place?


^[1] “If you received your fructose only from vegetables and fruits (where it originates) as most people did a century ago, you’d consume about 15 grams per day—a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical adolescent gets from sweetened drinks.” [Huffington Post]

Comments

[lebeautemps.livejournal.com]

I agree - a charity exists to further its aims rather than help the market it sells to.

But, this is not just about the consumer. It makes me feel uneasy that a charity is using the generosity of donors to put other people out of business. If donors realised that their goodwill was being used to destroy a business or help destroy their struggling high street, they might think twice.

Glad that Oxfam is not the only charity with Bookshops. Maybe we should start a charity bookstore that only funds local projects and out-compete Oxfam's business strategy, and dog them like Zizzi dogs Pizza Express. You know what I mean.

[ultraruby.livejournal.com]

Yes, I definitely think it's a bad strategy for Oxfam in terms of PR. People that give to (and buy from) Oxfam shops do so not only because it's easy and cheap and because of the overall end cause but because of that inherent belief in charity's general 'niceness'. If it gets out (as clearly it already is starting to) that the Oxfam bookshops are working to some sort of Starbucks model of market domination, i.e that they're not as nice as they might seem, then I reckon they might see donations drop and additional questions asked.

(It makes me wonder, actually, how the development of the 'Traid' Oxfam brand for fancier/designer clothes than are usually sold in its shops has affected independently owned boutiques. One would hope that there is a difference between what each shop would get and sell - i.e I'd separate out my great books and clothes to sell cheaply to a boutique/bookstore and my not-as-great ones to give to charity, but maybe not.)