The United Kingdom-based Jericho Coffee Traders, which is known for philanthropy, has chosen the Virtue app to manage charities on its Shopify store. Earlier known as Pledger, the Virtue app is available as free to install on the Shopify App Store. Owned by Pledger Giving Ltd., the app helps online brands donate a part of their sales profit to charities.
Installation of the Virtue app is easy and comes with technical support from the provider. Immediately after the set-up, Virtue quickly customised the app as per the philanthropic needs of Jericho Coffee Traders.
How Virtue Works?
On the Shopify App Store, Virtue is featured as an app that boosts marketing and conversion and helps merchants to sell products online. With integration into Jericho Coffee Traders, Virtue will now be responsible for automatically handling store donations. This includes keeping records of payments to various charities and donations made by customers at the time of checkout. Virtue also prepares reports based on donations and payment information.
Currently, Virtue is only available for merchants based on Shopify. Using the app is easy for even those with no knowledge of coding. It is rewarding too as daily donations are displayed on the Virtue dashboard.
About Jericho Coffee Traders
Jericho Coffee Traders is a coffee brand with a prime brick-and-mortar store located in Oxford, UK. It was founded by Kiwi James and his wife Lizzie in 2009. As stated in the press release, after buying the Vespa trike, the couple thought “that needs a coffee machine on the back of it”.
Jericho Coffee Traders now have three stores in Oxford and one online store powered by Shopify. Its online business works on a subscription model. The prime cafe still has an on-site roastery to sell espresso and filter coffees along with locally made pastries and cakes.
The British coffee brand is known for its philanthropy as it announced 10 percent charitable donations from its online sales last year. Jericho Coffee Traders also supported British Ukrainian Aid with its Slava Ukraini coffee, which means Glory to Ukraine. Later, the company launched a Self Care blend to support Oxfordshire mental health charity Restore. It also makes regular donations to CRISIS, a charity for the homeless in the UK, with Jericho Coffee Traders’ popular Coffee Advent Calendar.
With so many commitments, Jericho Coffee Traders faces the daunting task of tracking and managing payments flawlessly. Earlier, the company had to manage all this manually, but now with the Virtue app, Jericho Coffee Traders get much more time to focus on its business.
Amid the ongoing festive shopping season, Jericho Coffee Traders believes that donations are expected to increase by customers at the checkout page.
About Virtue
Virtue is a technology provider built by Mariya Kupriyenko, Liam Houlahan and Westen MacIntosh. Kupriyenko has a decade-long experience in e-commerce. Apart from Virtue, she co-founded two social enterprises to support poverty-hit kids and food redistribution. While Liam is a technology entrepreneur, Westen has over seven years of experience in environmental, social, and governance (ESG).
The company founders are located in the UK and New Zealand but work efficiently for merchants worldwide. Virtue claims to have been part of more than 40,000 orders with charitable contributions. It has served more than 100 merchants based in the UK.
Virtue accepts donations from both Shopify merchants and customers to ensure a deep impact using product sales. It allows merchants to donate to up to three causes from an ecosystem of more than 20000 charities spread across the United Kingdom. They can also donate directly from sales to a particular cause. These merchants can then encourage their customers to contribute to donations.
The Virtue app also helps merchants incentivise sales using a feature called Upsell with Impact. The app tracks and shares the difference in sales using charity donations. Available as free on the Shopify App Store, Virtue charges merchants with monthly donations for a Virtue subscription.
Big Investment
In August, Virtue announced the closing of its pre-seed round, which was led by SFC Capital. The company then joined the Techstars accelerator. The social impact application has been on Shopify since 2021 when it was launched as a widget. More than 600 online stores in the UK have used Virtue.
Virtue helps both merchants and customers to donate to social and environmental causes as an additional feature to products sale. Many online stores and brands have supported Virtue’s initiatives against plastic usage and reducing carbon footprints. The London-based company also works for the betterment of disadvantaged communities.
Social Impact
Virtue claims to have accelerated sales for Shopify merchants by more than 1.9 million pounds, thanks to 35,000 orders. All these orders also contributed to social impact initiatives.
“Brand values are more important than ever to consumers, and studies show that investment in social impact partnerships has a positive ROI. It’s a win, win, win, for causes, retailers, and consumers. We are stoked to be backed by two incredibly reputable and active investors in realising Virtue’s vision,” Mariya Kupriyenko, CEO of Virtue, said in a statement.
“We were delighted to have led Virtue’s latest funding round. With the rapid growth in socially conscious consumers, it is imperative that retailers are able to continue to retain and attract these individuals by doing their bit to solve some of the biggest issues facing the planet and societies,” a SFC Capital spokesperson said.
“Virtue’s easy-to-integrate technology allows them to do this in a simple and effective manner. The team behind the company is extremely passionate and we are excited to see what the future holds for the company,” the spokesperson added.
