IS YOUR CHARITY BENEFITNG FROM AN ONLINE CHRISTMAS?

Get a slice of the biggest online shopping boom ever.

Why host your fair with us?

YOUR OWN VIRTUAL FAIR 'MARKETPLACE'

We provide a fabulous shopping experience for charity fair supporters to buy from our select boutique brands using a familiar style of marketplace, similar to Amazon or ASOS. We offer our platform to charity partners to host their own virtual fair. Our 100+ curated brands commit to donate 10% to charity.

preview of blb marketplace

launches in

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Our fair partners

Charities we are hosting in 2020
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how your virtual fair works

2 WEEK SET UP TIME

You plan your online fair

Set a launch date. Consider options eg guest brands, media sponsor, free prize draw, fair voucher book

We create your microsite

A branded landing page dedicated to your virtual fair set to collect donations.

You invite your supporters

Promote to your email list, social media, local press, sponsors, ambassadors, mail out flyers.

Shoppers transact on BLB

Everything on ONE website: browsing 1000s of products, addding to cart, payment and donations.

Brands despatch goods

Orders are relayed to brands behind the scenes who despatch purchases.

Charity gets paid

Purchases that come from your fair are tracked and 10% of sales go to you, paid monthly.

why partner with us?

Charity Benefits

EASY

We do the heavy lifting enabling you to act fast

thousands

of curated products ready to be bought all in one place

ENGAGING

Stay connected to your supporter base

LOCAL

Include your own guest brands and stallholders.

LONGEVITY

Keep the fundraising going indefinitely

reach

more supporters with continued promotion

FLEXIBLE

Include silent auction, prize draw, sponsors

EXPERIENCE

Offer supporters a great shopping experience
"It's a great idea and people seemed to love the idea and thank you for all you did to support our 2 week slot”  
August 2020Charity Fundraiser
"I am really grateful, and may I say what a 'Brilliant' idea Brilliant Little Brands is.”
September 2020Fair Organiser
"On a personal note as an events organiser I do hope I will be working with you again”
July 2020Event Organiser
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WHAT FAIR PARTNERS GET

Vendor features

Key Features

Your very own virtual fair

Access to 100+ brands

A curated selection of quality indepedent brands not found on the high street

Marketing support

Benefit from national press, social media and marketing to our shopper base

Free Prize Draw

Use our system for selling tickets for a prize draw (including free option to be legal)

Automation of Commission

No reliance on trust to collect your charity commission. No codes. No chasing up. Easy for you. Easy for shoppers.

Simple set up

Quick and easy with no set up required from you.

10% of sales donated

We deduct 10% at source collected on your behalf.

Guest Brands

Option to invite your own local brands that your support base know and recognise.

Extra Donations

We collect donations on your behalf within the platform with Gift Aid option..

Frequently Asked Questions

Drop us an email if we haven’t answered your question…

How it works

We provide a fabulous shopping experience for charity fair supporters to buy from our select boutique brands using a familiar style of marketplace, similar to Amazon or ASOS. We offer our platform to charity partners to host their own virtual fair. Our 100+ curated brands commit to donate 10% to charity.

When partnering with BLB a charity can offer its supporters 100+ brands to shop from and a professional platform that will be available for them to use 24/7. 10% of every purchase made from your shoppers will be donated to your charity.

Each fair has its own dedicated home page within BLB to which they promote to their supporters and followers. This is branded to your ‘fair’. Shoppers can browse our large curated inventory of novel products and buy them by adding them to a cart just as they would in Amazon or Ebay. The transaction is all done in one checkout. Orders are despatched directly by the brands to the shoppers.

We have invested a great deal of time and resource into developing an ecommerce website dedicated to hosting virtual fundraising fairs to making it quick and easy for fairs to offer a fantastic range and breadth of products all seemingly under their own umbrella.  

Financials

Currently the platform is free for charities or fundraising committees to use – so long as they meet the basic eligibility criteria.  Where a charity has more bespoke requirements we may quote a fee. Talk to us and we can let you know.

We make a modest annual charge to the brands – like a ‘table fee’ – and also take between 5-10% commission on sales.  Guest brands pay BLB a fee of £30 to participate in your fair for a three month period.

We make a 5% admin charge for all charity sales, which includes 2.5% credit card transaction fee.

We use ‘behind the scenes’ tracking of visitors to the website so whenever a sale is made we attribute it to the fair page that the shopper first arrived at. Using a ‘cookie’ we can keep track of any future sales from the shopper even if they don’t visit your fair’s landing page (for up to 180 days).

No! We deduct the commission at source and hold on to it until the returns period has expired.

We will do a monthly reconciliation and transfer funds on a monthly basis. We also need time to factor in any refunds that may be issued for returns.

About BLB

The four directors review every application for membership. We do not accept all-comers and use our wide network of contacts to research applicants. We avoid brands that are predominantly wholesalers and most of our applicants are established on the charity and sports event fair circuit.

We have been founded on the principle of socially responsible shopping, all of our members have a track record of donating 10% of their sales at charity events. We do not tempt customers with discounts but give them opportunity to make a difference in their community. We select brand members for the quality and uniqueness of their product and actively seek out those who have the highest ethical and sustainable standards

Our founders, Emily & Mark Bradley and Amanda & Nick Hamlyn have backgrounds in Digital Marketing, Event Management, Retail Buying and Merchandising.

Brilliant Little Brands was set up in the early days of the Covid 19 lockdown by a group of small businesses owners from the Charity Fairs circuit, as a way of supporting each other. Our directory website showcased brands who all donate 10% to charity. We started with Age UK’s CoronaVirus Appeal and raised £1000 in a fortnight! In May we partnered with some of the charities whose events we used to attend and launched our first Virtual Fair. We have been running events ever since, raising over £6000 in 4 months.

BLB was run on a voluntary basis from March 2020. In October 2020 we launched our marketplace website where our members pay us an annual listing fee and a sales commission .

Getting started

If it’s a standard fair, we can get you up and running in just a matter of days. However, if you want to invite Guest Brands and have a Free Prize Draw we will need rather longer (2 to 4 weeks).

Yes! So long as you book it in a few weeks before. 

Not at all, as each fair has its own dedicated landing page and its own audience and set of followers to promote the fair to, most likely in very different parts of the UK.

There’s an application form on this webpage.

We host fairs for both local organising committees and directly for charities. Either way, you need to be raising funds for a registered charity. A key requirement is to have the resource and commitment to promote the online event to your supporters with a dedicated email list of at least 1000+ supporters, have very active social media and a network of proactive ambassadors who commit to promote the virtual fair. Ideally you will have held a physical fair before and have contacts you can reach who conform to an affluent shopping demographic.

Your Fair

www.brilliantlittlebrands.com/YOURCHARITYNAMEHERE

The success of your fair depends on how many visitors shop on your fair page. You need a marketing plan aimed at a wider audience than just your database. Harness the power of social media to spread the word to your wider community. We will give you some tips and ideas of how to do this. Our brand members will also promote your fair through their social media and BLB has its own mailing list too.

Our platform is ready to host your fair so you don’t need to be a technical wizard! Use your time to make connections in the local community, find sponsors to pay for advertising on Facebook or on your local radio station. Approach celebrity supporters who can help spread the word about your fair through their social media

This depends on how quickly you want to launch your fair. Every fair page will be personalised with its charity’s banner and some information about your fundraising. Given a longer lead time we can add extra features for you to make your page really unique 

Yes you can invite up to 20 of your favourite stalls. They will only appear on your fair page and will be listed for 3 months. They must have a transactional website that can link with ours. They must also meet our standards for presentation and agree to our terms & conditions. 

Your fair will be actively promoted by us for a 2 week period. After that it will still be accessible to your supporters for a year. At any time during that year you can re-promote your page to coincide with other events in your fundraising calendar. 

You will send your supporters a unique link that takes them straight to your fair page so they will not be aware of any other fairs. Visitors arriving on the BLB site via Google or Facebook will have a choice of charities to support so you may pick up new supporters in your community.

To comply with data protection, customer details can only be processed by the parties the customer contracts with, which is Brilliant Little Brands and the Merchant.

Where a customer purchases your charity’s merchandise or makes a donation via Brilliant Little Brands, then you will be a data controller for those contacts and may process the data in keeping with your own privacy policy.

You may view BLB’s privacy policy here:  link

Fairs hosted at BLB this autumn…
Lord Mayor of London’s Appeal – DragonFest Shopping Village …14 September 2020
RDA Autumn Gift Fair Newbury Riding for the Disabled …3 October 2020
GRAND AUTUMN FAIR for Action Medical Research Beaconsfield …5 October 2020
Christmas Fair for Action Medical Research Spalding …19 October 2020
Macmillan Merton Early Early Christmas Fair …24 October 2020
CAWC International’s Christmas Fair for Motor Neurone Disease Association …2 November 2020
Chuff’s Scotland Christmas Fair for Riding for the Disabled …9 November 2020
Gift of Sight Christmas Fair St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital …16 November 2020
Farleigh Hospice Christmas Fair …1 November 2020
Dumfries Charity Christmas Fair for CLIC Sargent …16 November 2020
The Hampshire Fair …23 November 2020
Oxford Botanic Garden & Arboretum …30 November 2020

Hampshire Office:

Social Media & Customer Communications
Emily Bradley
emily@brilliantlittlebrands.com 
social@brilliantlittlebrands.com

01264730445 / 07740707501

Marketing & Website
Mark Bradley
mark@brilliantlittlebrands.com
marketing@brilliantlittlebrands.com

01264730445 / 07771642665

Surrey Office:

Brand Management
Nick Hamlyn
nick@brilliantlittlebrands.com
brands@brilliantlittlebrands.com

02084040623 / 07891569059

Fair Management
Amanda Hamlyn
amanda@brilliantlittlebrands.com
fairs@brilliantlittlebrands.com

02084040623 / 07976718373‬