IS YOUR CHARITY BENEFITNG FROM THE BOOM IN ONLINE SHOPPING?

Join the shopping revolution and fundraise 365 days a year

Why partner with us?

YOUR CHARITY’S OWN MARKETPLACE

We provide a fabulous shopping experience, where your supporters can shop from 100+ carefully chosen small businesses all in one place. Our familiar style of marketplace works much like Amazon or ASOS except every sale brings a donation to charity. Use our platform as an all year round fundraising resource. Create your own virtual fair campaigns supported by special offers from our brands.

preview of blb marketplace

Our CHARITY partners

Recent Charity Campaigns on BLB
Previous
Next

how your shopping page works

2 WEEK SET UP TIME

Plan your campaigns

Schedule your calendar of events e.g. Valentines, Easter, Mother’s Day .... Consider options e.g. selling your own merchandise, getting a sponsor, prize draws, vouchers, how you will advertise your events.

We create your unique page

A personalised landing page with your logo, banner and colours, tailored to your needs and set to collect donations.

You invite your supporters

Promote your page’s unique URL to your email list, social media, local press, sponsors, ambassadors, mail out flyers.

Shop on BLB

Shoppers browse 1000’s of products, add to their cart, make one final payment.

Brands despatch

Orders are relayed to our 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 all year round

reach

Broaden your supporter base

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
Previous
Next

WHAT CHARITY PARTNERS GET

Key features

Key Features

Your very own shopping page

Access to 100+ brands

A curated selection of small independent businesses not found on every high street.

Marketing support

Benefit from BLB’s marketing in national press, social media and to our own mailing list.

Free Prize Draw

Use our system to sell tickets for a prize draw or raffle ( if you have the appropriate licence)

Automation of Commission

No reliance on trust to collect your commission. No codes for your supporters to enter. Easy for you and easy for shoppers.

Simple set up

Just send us your page banner and we will do the rest.

10% of sales donated

We deduct 10% of all sales you generate at source on your behalf

Feature your favourites

Invite some of your local brands, who your supporters know and recognise, to join BLB

Extra Donations

We can collect gift aided donations via your page.

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 personalised with your own logo and branding. Shoppers can browse our extensive range of well chosen products and buy them by adding them to a cart just as they would in Amazon or ASOS. The transaction is all done in one checkout. Orders are despatched directly by the brands to the shoppers.

Most virtual fairs are a directory linking to various vendors’ own websites. Customers use a code to identify their purchase with your charity. BLB used this system when we first launched. Sadly, customers often forgot to enter the codes so donations were often lost. Having made a purchase on one website we found customers were less likely to return to the directory for more shopping.

To maximise and secure your donations we have invested a great deal of time and resource into a fully featured ecommerce website. It is dedicated to hosting virtual fundraising web pages and events for charities, making it quick and easy for them to offer a fantastic range and breadth of products, all seemingly under their own umbrella. 

Financials

Our platform is free for charities to use so long as they meet our basic fundraising criteria:

  1. They must commit to a minimum of 3 campaigns a year which they will promote to their supporters.
  2. They must generate £50 of sales per month (£600 annually), otherwise they pay a modest hosting fee of £5 per month (£60 annually.) This is levied by way of a returnable deposit of £60.
  3. If your charity has other bespoke requirements, let us know and we can offer a quote.

We make a modest annual charge to our brands – equivalent to a single ‘table fee’ – and also take between 5-10% commission on sales. 

We make a 5% admin charge on sales of charity merchandise – Christmas cards etc. This includes the 2.5% card handling fee that we pay on your behalf for each sale.

We use ‘behind the scenes’ tracking of visitors to the website so whenever a sale is made we attribute it to the referral link that the shopper first used to arrive at the site. Using a ‘cookie’ we can keep track of any future sales from the shopper even if they don’t revisit your fair’s landing page for a while (for up to 180 days).  Once a sale is attributed to your charity, all future sales from that shopper will also be attributed .

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

We use a third party tracking service to monitor the sales attributed to referrers’ links.  It factors in time for any refunds issued for returns before paying out. Funds are paid monthly.  Over the Christmas trading period we offer customers an extended returns period to the first week of January. This would be reflected in the timing of post-Christmas payments.

Yes! You can access your own dashboard and view orders and donations earned in real time and see when they will be available to pay-out to the charity. 

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.

Charities can recommend local or regular brands to be members and we will accept your proposal as a reference. We reserve the right to restrict membership in oversubscribed categories e.g. jewellery & home fragrance etc.

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 you are happy to run with our core members, we can get you up and running in a matter of days. If you would like to invite your own stallholders to join BLB, add special features (prize draw etc) we may need 2 – 4 weeks depending on the time of year.

No, not at all as each fundraiser has their own dedicated landing page. You will include a direct link in all your marketing so your supporters will go straight to your page. To prevent overlap we won’t book a campaign if another is already scheduled in your region. This isn’t always possible in the run up to Christmas.

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 your campaigns. Ideally you will have held a physical fair before and have contacts you can reach who conform to an affluent shopping demographic.

Yes, this is a great way of increasing your reach and sharing the marketing campaign. Your page could be a collaboration of neighbouring committees who each have their own 2 week campaign during the year. The money raised during each campaign could be attributed to that branch.

Here is a link to an application form where you can tell us a bit more about you

Your Shopping Page

www.brilliantlittlebrands.com/YOURCHARITYNAMEHERE

The success of your fundraising depends on how many visitors you can bring to your page.

You need a marketing plan aimed at a wider audience than just your email 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 but if social media isn’t your thing, involve younger family members to help spread the word and get your campaign in front of a new audience.

Our brand members will also mention your campaigns in their social media. BLB sends out regular newsletters to its own mailing list too as well as our own advertising campaigns on social media.

Our platform is ready to host your fair so you don’t need to be a technical wizard! Your marketing campaign is key and the effort you put in will be reflected in the success of your page. Consider the support your charity head office can offer. Do they have celebrity ambassadors in your area who would be happy to publicise your event? Approach family members or work colleagues to help build your social media reach.

This depends on how quickly you want to launch your page. Every 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 to make your page really unique. 

Yes, you can invite up to 12 of your favourite stallholders to join BLB or choose to feature existing BLB members. “Featured Brands” will appear in a gallery at the top of your page and you can also include some of our existing members.  In addition to their joining fees, brands will pay your charity a “table fee” of £20 for this premium listing.

Your page will be live for a year from launch. Each of your campaigns will run for a two week period.

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 campaign. 

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

We can incorporate your sponsors’ logos in a prominent place on your page. In return, sponsors could pay for targeted advertising on social media, local press & radio. Suggest they match-fund what you raise to an agreed limit. They could also publicise your campaigns to their mailing list.

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

EXTENDED CHRISTMAS RETURNS

All cancellable goods received between 15 November and 22 December 2020 (inclusive) can be returned in their original condition at any time before 10 January 2021. For all cancellable goods purchased on 23 December 2020 or after, our 14-day returns policy applies.  Please notify the brand as soon as you know that you wish to return an item for exchange or refund.

Whilst we are sure you will love your purchase, sometimes things don’t fit, aren’t the colour you expected or just aren’t right!

Brilliant Little Brands is a marketplace and our individual brands may have their own returns policies.  Where these differ, they can be viewed on the individual product pages. 

NON RETURNABLE ITEMS

As a general guide, you will not be able to return items where health or hygiene is a concern; underwear, swimwear, face masks, earrings for pierced ears, make up etc. Items that have been personalised in any way and food & drink may also not be accepted back. Anything that was delivered in a sealed packet and has been opened may also not be accepted back.

Anything that you receive damaged or broken should also be advised through the method below.

If you need to return anything, please go to the “Returns” link at the bottom of the Home page on the brilliantlittlebrands.com website and follow the instructions. Our guideline to our brands is that customer refunds should be received by them within 10 days of receipt of the return however different brands may have different returns policies and the timescale will also depend on the payment method and who you bank with.

All goods are to be returned to the individual brand once the return has been agreed by them. No goods should ever be returned to our registered address.

We hope you do not need to return your purchase but if you do, be assured all of our brands comply with the current legislation (Consumer Rights Act 2015, Consumer Contracts Regulations 2014).

SELLER TERMS & CONDITIONS
E-COMMERCE STORE INTEGRATIONS

Be sure to read the FAQs and our Terms & Conditions. 
We will send you a more detailed form to complete later.  
Market Place is set to launch in October.

Founder Member Market Place Application

SELLER TERMS & CONDITIONS
E-COMMERCE STORE INTEGRATIONS

Be sure to read the FAQs and our Terms & Conditions. 
We will send you a more detailed form to complete later.  
Market Place is set to launch in October.