All wrapped around a party: arm twisting, blackmail, shameless badgering & friendly rivalry.
This year's annual SCAA conference and exhibition is sure to supply a comprehensive insight to the ever-burgeoning coffee industry. An event surrounded by altruistic intents is certainly a welcome to balance such an informative agenda, as the 2nd Annual Good Works T-Shirt Auction takes places. This retailer auction celebrates and benefits the various charities attached to the coffee industry.(By SCAA Allied Services Committee)
This year's Good Works Auction will supply a celebration to benefit the generous support of good works by coffee related charities. This "not so silent" silent auction kicked off last year in Charlotte, North Carolina as the brain child of the SCAA Allied Services Committee to celebrate and assist retailers to garnish recognition for their often irreverent and unique design work, while hitting up suppliers to raise money for charity. The auction is described as one part charity auction, three parts entertainment, and 100% fun that is certainly an event tailored for everyone in the industry.
The T-shirts up for auction are described as "some of the coolest, raciest, and yes, even the corniest in an industry that is widely known and admired for its independent streak." The 25 participants from last year hailed from such diverse coffee towns as Fleetwood, Pennsylvania; Olympia, Washington; Clearwater, Florida; The San Francisco Bay area; Greer, South Carolina and Tarrytown, New York that together pulled in almost $5,000 for their favorite coffee charities. This year, fundraising goals is designated to double triple or even quadruple that number.
Strategies for Retailers
This event can be designed for retailers to garnish much needed press at home or used as a fundraiser within your own store. There are very few rules: only 25 retail participants; the retail participants must "work" the auction; the T-Shirt must be a retail shirt; and the monies must go to one of the designated coffee charities. For retailers this auction should be treated as a guerrilla marketing opportunity, a chance to show your chops--an event with bragging rights going to the most creative.
Last year Michelle and Chris Granitz owners of Max Crema's, Fleetwood, Pennsylvania raised more than half of the total monies by getting sponsors to pony up before the auction even started. Way to think out of the box! This year many of last year's participants have already started planning their strategies and plotting to raise the most money for their chosen coffee charity. Retail companies such as Pacific Bay Coffee Co. of Walnut Creek, California where Kerry Laird a co-founder organized an in-house design contest around the Good Works Auction. As Laird stated: "I knew we could do more to raise funds for this year's Good Works Auction and we wanted to come up with a special shirt with more than our logo on it. As a thank you for being named Best Coffee House of the San Francisco East Bay by local magazine, Diablo, we held a t-shirt design contest for our employees that would include the "Best Of" award logo. Our crew voted on their favorite, designed by Alex Park, with our logo (a coffee cherry, flower and leaf) in a portafilter and our new espresso blend 'Espresso Obsesso' extracting in to a cup."
Laird expounded, "Feedback on the shirts have been very positive so we figured we had a good candidate for the auction. Adding the brilliant idea another retailer had at last year's conference we planned to start the bidding early in our cafe. While we were taking the photo for this article a curious customer started the bidding on the spot! We'll also display the shirts and with signage as well. We also plan to let our suppliers know we'll be participating a week or two before the conference ahead of time and ask for their support. (Before the leveraging favors, extracting or making promises and insinuating desertion, all to increase the bidding and raise the charitable stakes at the auction begins)."
There is a developing and increasingly escalating rivalry between Mike Love of Coffee Labs based in Tarrytown, New York and Terry Davis of New Harmony Coffee & Tea based in Clearwater, Florida over who can raise more charitable funds than the other. When asked of his concern over Coffee Labs sophisticated fund-raising plans this year, Davis had this to say of Love: "Anyone that uses dogs on his logo is bound to rollover once and awhile. When I beat him this year, he can go retrieve the check from the highest bidder."
Strategies for Bidding
It is recommended to bid early and often as the money is for charity. Every charity involved will be listed with the sponsoring retailer's t-shirt. So participants can bid for the retailer, the t-shirt or for their favorite coffee charity. Charities represented at this year's auction include: Coffee Kids; Coffee Quality Institute (CQI); International Women's Coffee Alliance; Coffee Lifeline Project; Cup for Education; Grounds for Health. Such organizations reflect a wide-range of great coffee charities, doing truly good works for the coffee industry.
One of the more creative strategies for bidding involves the use of co-operative bidding. Companies, groups of companies and even SCAA committees are all encouraged to pool their bids and help raise more funds for the auction. The SCAA Allied Committee, "the hardest working committee," would like to challenge other SCAA Committees to outbid us on any T-Shirt!
What, Where, When and How?
This year's event will be held at the SCAA Opening Night Reception on Friday May 4, 2007 at the Long Beach Aquarium in Long Beach, California. The T-Shirts will be displayed for formal viewing and bidding at the opening of the reception, and will close at the end of the reception. Quasi-official bid badgerers and hecklers will be employed by the retailers, associates and friends to help increase bids. The auction is intended for 25 individual T-Shirts to be awarded to the highest bidder.
Visit www.goodworksauction.com for additional information.
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| Title Annotation: | SCAA Event |
|---|---|
| Comment: | All wrapped around a party: arm twisting, blackmail, shameless badgering & friendly rivalry.(SCAA Event) |
| Publication: | Tea & Coffee Trade Journal |
| Date: | Apr 1, 2007 |
| Words: | 984 |
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