AvailableCar raises £1m for children's charities

The AvailableCar Supermarket’s in Castle Donington and Sutton-In-Ashfield, both located on Jct 24 and Jct 28 on the M1, adopted Rainbows Children’s Hospice in 2010 in the hope to raise considerable funds for this much-needed facility.

All the AvailableCar Supermarkets adopt a local charity specific to the region they are in - Castle Donington and Sutton-In-Ashfield stores support Rainbows Children’s Hospice, Cannock supports Acorn’s Children’s Hospice and their newest flagship site in Leeds supports Martin House Children’s Hospice. To date, AvailableCar have raised over £787,021 for Rainbows and over £1 million collectively for all three Children’s Hospices.

AvailableCar owners, Graham and Alison Bell instigated the brilliant idea that every car buying customer, would kindly be asked to donate £5 to an adopted local charity at each of their car supermarkets. In return, the business would match the £5 too, making it £10 in total. The response and customer generosity has been phenomenal and by combining both donations, hundreds of thousands of pounds have been paid towards helping these much-needed children’s charities to continue to run.

Graham Bell, AvailableCar Chairman said: “We are so pleased to have raised £1 million for our adopted Charities and we wish to thank our customers, who’s kind generosity has made this possible. When we first trialled the idea of asking customers for donations, we were unsure of the response, however, we could not have had a more positive outcome, and many customers donate more than asked.

The AvailableCar Team have to ensure they always communicate to every customer why we support Rainbows and where every penny goes, otherwise the scheme wouldn’t be a success.”

AvailableCar chose Rainbows as it is the only Hospice of its kind in the area, providing care, support, fun and laughter for children with life limiting conditions. Rainbows also help and support their families, who reside in the same region as the AvailableCar Castle Donington and Sutton-In-Ashfield Supermarkets.

The Castle Donington and Sutton-In-Ashfield stores have gone from strength to strength over the years, having served thousands of customers, who have been delighted with the AvailableCar ‘hassle-free’ World Class Service and the vast high-quality cars offered by the Group. AvailableCar is now one of the leading used car retailers in the UK and one of the top-ten most visited used-car dealer websites.

AvailableCar now have four Supermarkets in total, their newest and flagship store opened in Leeds in West Yorkshire in 2016 right next to Jct 28 on the M62, and their Cannock supermarket is also highly successful and situated just two miles from Jct 11 and 12 on the M6, in the West Midlands.

The Castle Donington supermarket was the first to open in 2002 with only 40 employees and 400 cars on display, today the site has 268 employees and over 1450 cars. The Sutton-In-Ashfield store was the second to open for AvailableCar in 2007 and employs 167 Team Members from the local region. AvailableCar as a Group now stock a staggering 5,000 low-priced cars, across 35 brands, with the majority priced from £4,000 through to £24,000 with over 1,000 under £8,000.

Accounts for the Group for year-ending December 2017, show (for all four of their UK supermarket sites) turnover up from £281million in 2016 to £304 million in 2017 (up 8.2%) and over 39,000 used cars bought and sold across the Group which is up 11%.

AvailableCar plan to continue their support for Rainbows in 2019.