One Stop franchisees find festive promotions and a Christmas Elf a winning combination!

One Stop franchisees find festive promotions and a Christmas Elf a winning combination!

One Stop franchisees are celebrating the festive season a little early this year with their customers embracing the brand like never before, all thanks to their market leading promotions and a helpful little Elf called Eddy!

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In the run up to Christmas, One Stop has been encouraging its franchisees to increase customer interaction and community spirit through a number of promotions – from fantastic offers across Christmas essentials to an Augmented Reality (AR) character, Eddy the Elf, who has quite literally been popping up in One Stop’s 950 stores across the UK.

Launched in November, the ‘Find Eddy the Elf’ app invites customers to find Eddy and his friends, Edwina, Old Eric, Auntie Elsie and Baby Elfy, in store in exchange for thousands of incredible prizes, which includes a trip to Lapland. Eddy merchandise and online games were also introduced to create further engagement for customers.

One Stop is the first retailer to introduce AR as a customer experience and it has proved to be a hit with colleagues and customers alike, while raising funds for nationally adopted charity Alzheimer’s Society.

Maz Amin from One Stop Canterbury said: “What I like about One Stop is they think outside the box. Their strategy is to bring something new out every Christmas and Eddy the Elf has been great this year. It’s not just a run of the mill promotion and also supports charity which our customers like.”

In order to boost brand awareness for their franchisees, One Stop teamed up with Thorntons, Smarties, Foxes, Malteasers, Tango and Walkers to offer weekly deals for customers and created a 3 for £5 on chocolate deal – perfect for picking up Christmas treats, which the whole family can enjoy.

Maz added: “The weekly promos have been great and push sales. They enable us to upsell and the margins are good.

“The Christmas promos influence new customers coming into the store, purely on the strength of what’s on offer. It undoubtedly helps us to compete with the big supermarkets and the quality of the products are superb.

“We’ve had lots of comments this year like, ‘I didn’t know you did this’ such as wrapping paper and we’re finding customers don’t need to get in their car and drive to the bigger supermarkets as they can get all they need in One Stop.”

Alan Fincham from One Stop in Attenborough agrees: “The ‘3 for £5’ deal on chocolate is the outstanding line this year,” he said. “The ‘2 tubs for £8’ on products like Quality Street is also a strong market leading promotion and is really driving customers into our store.

“The elves have sold well and we are currently have a raffle going on for a large Eddy the Elf, along with a Christmas hamper filled with festive goodies, which is being drawn on Christmas Eve.”

Head of Marketing at One Stop Nigel Prendergast said: “It has been really encouraging to see how our franchisees have embraced Eddy the Elf and the Christmas offers this year and made them their own.

“We work hard to make the franchise model as attractive as possible, every step of the way and constantly look for innovative and stand out promotions and initiatives to drive customers into store, throughout the year.

“Increased footfall, higher basket spend and positive engagement with the community have all been enjoyed by our franchisees, which drives us on to work even harder on our next campaigns for 2020. What this space!”