Sales at a Peterborough charity Christmas card shop have gone through the roof, much to the delight of the local community. Over £27,000 worth of cards were sold by the shop based in a local church, St John The Baptist, in Church Street.
The Peterborough shop has a record of achieving spectacular sales levels, having made £22,974 last December. This year’s record was broken a week before the shop was closed; the final total of £27,281 comfortably beating last year’s figure of £22,974.
Cards for Good Causes, an organisation that sells Christmas cards on behalf of over 320 charities, ran the sale from the end of October to last Friday. The organisation manages a network of around 300 charity Christmas shops across the UK and ensures charities are able to continue their good work.
Around £24,000 of the amount raised came from card sales alone, with the money raised (minus an administrative charge) going to more than 30 charities. The remainder came from Christmas gifts donated by members of the public to help continue the work of Cards for Good Causes.
Shop manager Wendy Dyer was overjoyed at the record sales and thanked the police and her team of 30 volunteers for the success. She said: “I’m delighted, especially as we were told, as it was a time of recession, not to expect to sell as much as normal.”
Dyer said the increase in sales was due to the Peterborough church being revamped: “We have had a lot of new customers because of the work outside that has made the church more accessible.”