Afternoon Tea at House of Lords

LONDON, 26 NOVEMBER 2018: The UK’s top small businesses, including an innovative Digital Start Up from Marple, Stockport received special recognition today at an exclusive House of Lords reception.

Make it Local

MAKE IT LOCAL
Small biz POP UP Christmas MARKET
SATURDAY 1ST DEC 11AM – 4PM

Christmas Pop Up Market

We are delighted to have been named as one of the UK’s top ‘Small Biz 100’ by Small Business Saturday.

Stop the Press!!

We have made the 2018 NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards shortlist

It has just been announced that Stockport based digital entrepreneurs Marcus & Sam Naidoo of Shop Local Club Card have been shortlisted for the 2018 NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards in the service industries entrepreneur of the Year award. This category celebrates those who provide a new or established service in an original way.

The married couple from Marple in Stockport beat off some tough competition in order to make the regional shortlist, with a record number of businesses entering the awards nationally across the wide range of categories.

Shop Local Club Card (https://shoplocalclubcard.com) is a digital loyalty and rewards platform that gives businesses the ability to offer programs like Stamp Cards, Points Collection and Vouchers to their customers using a single membership card or free mobile app.

Now in its sixth year, the NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards has celebrated some amazing entrepreneurs over the years, many of whom are now household names. Past winners include David Buttress of Just Eat, Julie Deane OBE of The Cambridge Satchel Company, James Watt of BrewDog and most recently, Hannah and Sophie Pycroft of Spectrum Collections.

Marcus Naidoo said “Wow, we are absolutely thrilled to be finalists, for us to be successfully shortlisted is such a great honour, and to be recognised alongside other such fantastic finalists is truly humbling.”

Creator of the Awards, Francesca James, said: “We have been inundated with some incredible entries this year, and all shortlisted applicants should be extremely proud of themselves! This year has yet again seen a record number of entrants and we’ve been absolutely blown away by the strength and diversity of applications.”

“We cannot wait to celebrate entrepreneurship across Great Britain with them, and put a spotlight on the incredible talent within the British entrepreneur ecosystem.”

Gordon Merrylees, Head of Entrepreneurship at NatWest said: “Following another record-breaking year, I want to thank all of the entrepreneurs who entered and congratulate those who have been shortlisted, I look forward to seeing them at the regional finals.”

“Entrepreneurial spirit is still clearly alive and well, and NatWest is thrilled to be able to continue to support these awards to celebrate success with the businesses that are the lifeblood of the UK Economy as they start, scale and succeed.”

The NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards will celebrate entrepreneurship across a number of categories at 5 gala finals across the UK, including; Cardiff, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester & London. You can find more information about the awards and the ceremonies here: www.greatbritishentrepreneurawards.com.

12 months in and I’m quite concerned!

We now have almost 8000 membership cards on our Shop Local Club Card platform, that in itself is an amazing achievement considering that we only launched 12 months ago!

£3,534.00 could be lost!

We have been getting great feedback about the platform but something has come up that has me very concerned, looking at the data on the platform I have discovered that we have £3,534.00 worth of vouchers on Membership Cards that have not been registered!!

Lost Forever

The reason that this is quite alarming is that if the customers with these cards ever lose their membership cards, then these vouchers, points and stamps collected will be lost forever, as we don’t know who it belonged to. Also transaction for cards that are not registered cannot be entered into our monthly prize draws.

When I was designing the platform I had it in mind that the Membership Cards just work whether you register them or not. This makes adding points and stamps to cards easy when you first receive your card it has the points / stamps on it already before you even register it.

However we had some customers lose their cards and because they had registered the cards, we could easily reprint them and get them going again, but if you lose an unregistered card it will be impossible for us to find your membership number and get a reprint done for you. You will have to start again with a new Membership Card and lose all your hard earned points, stamps and vouchers.

Brilliant idea – simple text message!

With this in mind, we got to thinking, how can we make registering Membership Cards even easier. It was at one meeting that one of our team members came up with a brilliant idea – “why don’t we enable people to register their cards with a simple text message?”

This was a brilliant idea I thought and with a little bit of investigation and some development work, we came up with a service that would do just that. Now you can register your membership number by texting the following:

the word Shop,  and Your Name, and Membership Number 

to 60777

Your membership number is on the front of the card and starts with 0044, you can enter your membership number with or without spaces and its quick and easy and costs your standard network rate sms message, which more often these days is free.

This will now enable us to link your Membership Card to your mobile phone number, so if you lose your card – just tell us what your mobile number is and we will be able to get your card re-printed for you.

So if you have not registered your membership card with us do it NOW! Just text:

the word Shop,  and Your Name, and Membership Number 

to 60777

These last 12 months have been brilliant, challenging and educational all in one! I have loved the experience of serving the businesses that have joined and have been delighted by the positive responses you the customers have sent to us. Here is to another successful 12 months and beyond!

Thank you for reading and remember if you have any ideas for this blog then please don’t hesitate to email me directly.

Have a great week ahead!

Marcus K. Naidoo

Co-Founder & CEO
Shop Local Club Card
t: @mknaidoo or @shoplocalclub
f: @ShopLocalClub
Scott from Hamie Dog -Introducing Shop Local Club Card

Saving the High Street

We all know that having a vibrant High Street / Market Street is a sure sign of a healthy local economy and local area. Money spent at local shops has a better chance of remaining in the local are and research has shown that this is as high as 70% stays and circulates in you local area and community.
Research has also shown that customers that belong to a loyalty program are 70% more likely to become brand champions of that companies brand. Traditionally local business owners used paper based loyalty programs or their own unique Point Of Sale system to reward their most loyal customers for their business. This is very cumbersome for customers because they have to remember to carry many loyalty cards with them and most often don’t have the right card at the right time.
This is the reason we created Shop Local Club Card, a single membership or our free mobile app is all you need to be rewarded by all the participating local businesses in your area. Here is a video that one of our business members in the north east has made and he does a good job explaining how easy the mobile app works and why a program like this is needed for today High Streets.
Together we can make a big difference to the High Street!
As always please let me know what you think and if you have any idea’s for our blog please let me know.
Have a great week ahead!
Marcus K. Naidoo
Co-Founder Shop Local Club Card
t: @mknaidoo or @shoplocalclub
f: @ShopLocalClub

No Shop, No Problem

Since we launched almost 12 months ago, we have always been asked the question – what about if I don’t have a shop, can I still use the Shop Local Club Card platform for my business?

And the answer is a resounding YES! You don’t need a bricks and mortar shop or indeed have a premises on the high street – in fact I would go so far as to say that all businesses can benefit from supporting the Shop Local message and using our loyalty platform.

”all businesses can benefit from supporting the Shop Local message”

This might be a somewhat bold claim but bear with me as we use our imagination to see how / where a loyalty platform that has been built primarily to support high street shops can be used in other types of businesses.

OK, so apart from the obvious businesses like coffee shops, restaurants, green grocers and butchers that will be able to use either stamp cards or points collection and vouchers. You have businesses like  day care for dogs, used car dealerships, lawyers, accountants and estate agents – these types of businesses would not identify themselves as SHOPS, so here our chosen name is a bit unfortunate and I think a bit misleading to boot.

“these types of businesses would not identify themselves SHOPS”

I am certain however that if you asked any of these business owners if they support the Shop Local message they would say that they do, because #ShopLocal goes beyond just the shops, it’s about the community and about loving the areas where we live work and play.

So back to answer, the question – how can these businesses benefit from joining in the Shop Local Revolution by joining the Shop Local Loyalty platform. The doggy day care business is an easy one to answer – it’s a B2C business model so even though they don’t have a high street ‘shop’ presence they can still offer customers a Stamp Card type offer like ‘Get 50% off your 6th visit’ – this type of offer allows customers to earn a 50% discount on every 6th visit. They could even use a points based system, like earn 1 point for every £1 you spend with Doggy Day Care, (now remember this could be attributed to any services or products that the company offers), then for every 100 points get a £2 voucher to spend on any products or services. This is a fantastic 2% cash back offer for customers.

Now for the used car dealership, again this is a B2C type business that could benefit from using a similar points based system as discussed above, but in this case the vouchers generated might last 3 to 5 years and thus ensuring that the customers benefit from purchasing their next vehicle with the business.

The lawyers, accountants and the estate agents are a little bit more difficult to see how they could benefit from a loyalty program, but with a little bit of imaginative thought I have come up with these ideas.

•listing on the app with a flat discount like ‘£50 off’ or ’10% Off’ for Shop Local Members

•they could sponsor the backs of the Shop Local Membership card, these cards will be handed out by all participating businesses in their local area, and the cards are ‘meant for life’ so that will be like having your business card in customers’ wallets consistently.

•they could also be a local sponsor on the app, this creates an advertising opportunity again to local, national or international customers.

So as you can see from the above, with some imagination, we can see that all types of businesses can benefit from being part of the Shop Local Club Card platform.  If you have any other ideas on how more businesses, charities, government, council or other organisations can benefit from being part of the Shop Local message, then I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading and remember if you have any ideas for this blog then please don’t hesitate to email me directly.

Have a great week ahead!

Marcus K. Naidoo
Co-Founder Shop Local Club Card
t: @mknaidoo or @shoplocalclub
f: @ShopLocalClub

Merry Christmas & Thank you!

Here’s wishing you a very Merry Christmas.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank you so much for supporting your local independent businesses by using your Shop Local Club Card.

This means so much, not only to businesses, but also to the local economy. As you know, many local businesses support so many local initiatives that are aimed at making where we live a very special place.

Our aim in creating Shop Local Club Card is to provide a world class loyalty and rewards solution to local businesses and their customers, with this in mind we would really appreciate your feedback. Its only with your input that we know what we need to improve and also what we have got right. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Merry Christmas!

July £100 Winner

Your Questions Answered

Our aim is is provide a world class loyalty and rewards program, like Tesco and Starbucks, to local indie businesses like yours at an affordable price.

You can use Stamp Cards – like ‘Visit us 6 times get 20% Off’ or Points & Vouchers – where customers collect points for each £1 they spend and you give them a Voucher to redeem at their next visit. Your offer will be unique to your business.

Your customers will be be able to use a single membership card and/or our free app to track and monitor their Stamp Cards, Points and Rewards from all participating businesses.

Whats more for every visit recorded on our system to your business your customer will be entered into a £100 monthly cash prize draw.

So what does it cost?

Your customer use our system for free and membership cards are free.

Annual Subscription Charges for businesses

All subscription charges include a Free 30 day trial.

Listing Only – including, Phone, Web, and Location Links £30

Stamp Cards Only – All listing plus Stamp Card processing £90

Stamp Cards, Points &  Vouchers – £150

Loyalty plus Social Media and Digital Marketing start from £300

All you need to process customers is an internet connected device even 3G on your phone will do. But if you prefer to purchase a dedicated tablet, stand and security cable here are our prices:

Android Tablet Station £150

iPad Table Station  £175

We do not offer any contracts which means you can cancel your subscription at any time.  Whats more if our system does not work for you we will buy back any hardware that you have purchased. So there is really no risk to you joining this Shop Local Revolution and everything to gain from grateful and satisfied customers that love rewards!

I will be happy to come and demo our software system to you and show you how you can reward your loyal customers and keep them coming back. Just let me know what day and time is convenient for you.

Here is a link to a short video (less than 2mins) showing you how processing works – https://youtu.be/un33HLEXStM

Also here is a link to an article we featured in The Marple Review Newspaper – http://www.reviewnewspapers.co.uk/local-news/articles/2017/07/marple-introduces-loyalty-card/

We have also been featured in the Business Advice Magazine – http://businessadvice.co.uk/high-streets-initiative/a-customer-reward-scheme-generating-big-brand-loyalty-for-high-street-independents/

If you require more information please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

Kind regards

Marcus