RETAIL RANDOMS

BEFORE YOU GO: POST OFFICE / KENSITAS CLUB

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A BILLION RUBBER BANDS?

In another of those random press releases that arrives in our inbox most days, we got an email from BusinessWaste.co.uk asking what we’re sure they hoped was a controversial question: Is the Royal Mail the nation’s top litterer?

Bear with us on this one. Entitled ‘Delivering kerbside waste to a street near you’, the clickbait-style release does contain at least one ‘fact’: a freedom of information request apparently confirms that nearly one billion rubber bands are purchased by Royal Mail each year.

The release also pointedly suggests: “If you take a close look at the pavements up and down the UK, you might notice that they are littered with rubber bands.” Having taken a close look, we beg to differ. We couldn’t even find one on the street outside.

Anyway, the release insists that the culprit is your local postie and the company says that the amount of rubber bands thrown on the ground around the UK is in the millions which, therefore, makes the Royal Mail one of the nation’s biggest litterers.

Case closed. With a ping.

AH, THEM WERE THE DAYS

The Week In Retail is eternally indebted to a loyal reader who, for no apparent reason, dropped us an email to let us know he’d found a load of old Kensitas Coupons gathering dust in a drawer.

The more experienced retailers among you might remember the good old days when Kensitas Coupons were a thing. You got a coupon in every pack of Kensitas Club and you could save them up to buy whatever you liked from the Kensitas catalogue. In Scotland they were effectively a form of currency.

Anyway, David Anderson got in touch to tell us he got these coupons around 30 years ago and he’s wondering if he can still use them. We’ve promised we’ll get onto JTI and get it sorted for him.