The Entertainer raises £1million with Pennies

The Entertainer, the UK's fastest growing multichannel high street toy retailer, has reached a £1million milestone for eight children's hospital charities in partnership with Pennies, the digital charity box.

The Entertainer has been working with Pennies since August 2011 - introduced by one of the charity's payment technology partners Worldpay International - when it was launched across the retailer's nationwide stores.

Prior to the Pennies Partnership, The Entertainer stores were raising around £2,000 a year via traditional charity collection boxes for four regional children's hospital charities. Following the switch to Pennies, that amount was raised in the first week. After just six months of using Pennies, over £100,000 was raised for the children's charities supported by The Entertainer at that time.

Now in the 4th year of the partnership, The Entertainer has hit the incredible milestone of £1million raised for the (now) eight children's charities, the newest of which is Noah's Ark Children Hospital Charity in Wales.

Gary Grant, Managing Director and Founder of The Entertainer, said: “£1million is such an amazing achievement. The introduction of Pennies to our stores has been a fantastic way to collect for so many worthy causes. Without the continuous generosity of our customers, The Entertainer wouldn't have achieved this charitable milestone which undoubtedly will have a significant impact on our local children's hospitals."

Alison Hutchinson, Pennies CEO, added: “The Entertainer was Pennies' first in-store retailer to embrace the micro-donations movement. It was clear from day one customers felt good about giving – and this huge £1m milestone shows what a difference these pennies can make over four short years. What a wonderful early Christmas present for the hundreds of children supported by The Entertainer, its staff, and its fantastic customers."

The full list of supported children's charities are: Great Ormond Street Hospital, Alder Hey Children's Charity, Yorkhill Children's Charity, Help A Jersey Child, The Great North Children's Hospital, Birmingham Children's Hospital, Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal raising money for Bristol Children's Hospital, and Noah's Ark Children's Hospital Charity.

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Email: claire.hornbuckle@miprglobal.co.uk or kirsty.barr@miprglobal.co.uk

Notes to editors:

About The Entertainer

The Entertainer was founded by husband and wife team, Gary and Catherine Grant, in 1981. In recent years it has experienced strong growth and as a multichannel retailer it now has 108 high street stores across the UK and a website – www.TheToyShop.com that has over 18 million visits annually.

In September 2015 The Entertainer was awarded 'Best Retailer of Preschool Licensed Products (age group 0-5)' at The Licensing Awards. Now in their tenth year, The Licensing Awards brought together 1,400 retailers, licensees, licensors and suppliers to celebrate the achievements of all aspects of the industry.

In March 2015 The Entertainer was named in 'The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For', in the first year that the group have taken part. The Entertainer was ranked at number 82, after competing against more than 1,050 other businesses and organisations. The Entertainer was then awarded Specialty Retailer of the Year award at the Oracle Retail Week Awards ceremony which took place on 12th March 2015. It believes strongly in the importance of a positive work life balance and none of its shops open on Sundays allowing all employees to spend quality time with their families.

The Entertainer currently employs over 1,200 people in its stores, this number rises to over 1,900 on the lead up to Christmas, and a further 150 are based at its Head Office in Amersham.

The Entertainer donates 10% of its net annual profit to charity each year as well as encouraging employees to donate a portion of their salary to charity through Workplace Giving.

About Pennies

Pennies is the digital upgrade of the traditional charity box, enabling customers to donate a few pence to charity at the point of sale when paying by card; whether in-store, online or in-app.

Over 22 million customer micro-donations have been made across 50 retailers with Pennies to date. The charity continues to work with payments technology providers and merchants to drive the micro-donations movement, and maximise the funds consumers can collectively raise for UK charities.

Pennies estimates that if the UK's card holders donated 30p once a month over £150m would be raised for charity every year.

Pennies is enabled in a number of well-known brands including Domino's Pizza, Zizzi restaurants, Topps Tiles, The Entertainer, The Fragrance Shop and Screwfix; as well as a growing number of smaller merchants.

For more information on Pennies please visit: www.pennies.org.uk, @pennies_orguk, https://www.facebook.com/Penniesorguk.