Hi everyone, here is the news from the shop…

1. Daffodil Weekend and General Performance

2. Prepay accounts

3. Date of our AGM

4. Bureaucracy and privacy regulations

5. 150 Club Winners

1. Daffodil Weekend was, as everyone knows, a reduced affair because of the cold weather which had been widely forecast.  Really, we were surprised just how many visitors came along but of course our turnover suffered just like everyone else’s because of the weather.  Nevertheless the shop turned over £2,600 over the weekend which is low, but March finished overall on about average takings for the month, and our first quarter is ahead of all previous years’ performances.  There has to be a big thank you to our customers, staff and volunteers for making this possible.
2. Most of you will be aware of the Prepay system in the shop whereby customers put money into an account in their name, so that no cash is needed when members of their family come to buy from the shop - we just debit the cost from the customer’s balance.  Over 100 customers do this.  The system provides flexibility and convenience for customers and importantly, working capital for the shop.  Occasionally, these accounts go overdrawn and we have no problem with this.  However, we want to remind customers that this is not a system where debts can be built up and then cleared so that the account goes back to zero - we are not big enough to provide these credit accounts.  If you are a customer that has been using the system this way, we’d like you to transition to the proper way please.
3. We have settled on a date for our AGM, it is in the Thriplow Village Hall on 27th June, More details in the form of an agenda have already been sent out on the village email.
4. We have to comply with the new GDPR scheme which came in a few days ago for protection of personal data.  We keep names, addresses and occasional emails and phone numbers of our subscribers.  We wish to inform you that we only keep these for purposes of communicating shop business with you and we will not disclose them to any third party.  The data is not kept in the shop but on the computers of the shop committee members.  The regulation also means that you need to agree to us holding your data.  Accordingly, we will ask you to sign a simple form giving this authority when you renew your subscription in the summer.
5. The winners of the 150 Club in March were Graham White, Wendy Binns, Brenda Meggitt and Hanna Roberts.  April’s winners were Peter Yates, Annie Lander and Chris Neild. May’s winners are Diana LeMasurier, John Smith, Pat Easthope and Zib Gotto. Congratulations to them all!  If you want to join the lottery, please ask at the shop and we’ll enrol you.

That’s all for now…

Kevin