AN entrepreneur from Warrington has been crowned winner of the coveted Community Hero Award at this year’s eBay for Business Awards
Alongside the overall Grand Prize award, Daniel Taylor, e-commerce manager at St Rocco’s Hospice, received a £5,000 cash prize and support to help grow St Rocco’s business.
Mr Taylor was one of 10 eBay sellers to be recognised for their entrepreneurial success in the nationwide awards, which saw a record number of entries this year.
St Rocco’s Hospice offers palliative care to all who need it in Warrington and is largely funded by its retail stores and online offering. Back in 2019, the charity spotted the opportunity of online shopping for the charity shop sector and employed an ecommerce manager – Mr Taylor – who set about maximising St Rocco’s Hospice fundraising through ecommerce platforms like eBay.
During the pandemic, with stores closed up and down the country, this sales avenue became even more important for the charity, with St Rocco’s Hospice relying solely on selling donations online to fund care.
The charity aims to build on its online success by recruiting more trainees and moving to a bigger warehouse soon.
Mr Taylor said: “We’re thrilled to have won the Community Hero and Grand Prize awards. The pandemic has been an incredibly tough time for everyone, but especially for charities who have been hit hard by store closures, so to be recognised for our achievements this year is brilliant. eBay has played a huge role in helping to fund the vital work that St Rocco’s does, over lockdown and in the months since. Now, we’re focused on growing our eBay offering so we can support St Rocco’s and the Warrington community for years to come.”
eBay received over 2,000 entries for this year’s awards across all categories, ranging from kitchen table start-ups and university ‘side hustles’, to established family businesses and those complementing offline stores with online avenues.
There were hundreds of applicants from businesses that had started up during the COVID-19 pandemic, when eBay saw a 237 per cent boom in the number of small shops setting up on the marketplace – the equivalent to a new business registering online every two minutes.
Visit St Rocco’s Hospice on eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/stroccoshospice
