As was agreed at the recent meeting in Sibson an account has been setup for UK Whitegoods to retain funding in. Obviously funds are needed for meeting rooms and the likes and we do have other ideas on various uses to help the trade and to help ourselves.
The idea was to start off with a nominal amount of money to be paid by those that wish to contribute and draw use from the funds into the UKW account by standing order monthly. It was agreed that £5 a month was a reasonable amount and one that no-one would miss at all. Due to delays in getting the information from the bank of the account the initial payment is £10 then £5 per month thereafter, we really didn’t think anyone would object to that at all. This is now live and the Standing Order Mandate is now available in PDF format from the Downloads section of the site. Of course this is an entirely voluntary scheme and there is no restrictions being placed on the site, nor is it to become a “pay-to-use” type website, that’s not the point of this at all.
The idea is to build up some revenue to, in time, offer various member benefits for UKW members and we will also investigate the possibility of securing advantagous deals with partners in many different areas as well, hopefully to bring the buying power of the group as a whole to some use in cost savings.
Should you wish to use and put money in the pot then please get a reference number (a space is there for it on the mandate form) from site admin. This is essential to track which companies are paying into UKW.
This is only open to independent repairers at this time and not to any other parties.
All this takes time to do and it will not happen overnight but it will happen in time and we hope to offer many services and discounts that will aid the independent repair trade in general eventually.
Part of the reason for this is that through advertising in place and promotion of Amazon etc. UKW does actually generate some funding as it stands now, we needed a place to pay that money into so an account was needed anyway. These deals, whilst not generating massive amounts, do produce a steady income of sorts which is used to fund some UKW activities.
What we are looking for is your ideas, the members of UKW’s ideas on what sort of services that we can provide and look into and we invite any ideas to be aired either to site admin or within the forums.
It may be that in future as more services come online we will make the payment structure for those services optional, this is the idea, so that members can opt in and out of individual services as they see fit taking on those that suit your business an leaving ones that do not. We feel that this is the most sensible way forward for the future and one that should suit any business as it can be tailored to your own individual needs but still allows us to use the buying power of UKW as a whole.
There is more to come and more to happen with UKW as outlined at the meeting, but all in good time.
Here’s to a bright future for UK Whitegoods.