Oxfam @ Warwick Uni - the reply
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The background info
 Oxfam at Warwick University was a lovely shop, situated on-campus, in what Oxfam HQ call "shopping complex", even though the term is a tad big. Let's just say it was in the main non-academic part of campus, under the Union build, thus benefitting from quite a lot of transit in front of its doors.
The shop opened in April 2006, and showed growth - despite the plans for a Union rebuild, there was no reason to suspect the events set in motion in the end of December 2007. It was offering clothes, books, music and fairtrade stuff, and was showcasing the charity in a unique way on campus.
In business terms, it was making over £15k per annum, despite high depreciation costs (taken into account for that figure!), after substracting all costs, and not even counting the donations taken from tins/unwrapped products/... (what is called the NSC figures in Oxfam accounting jargon).
And yet, the day after Boxing Day, local management was made aware of possible plans of not renewing the lease, meaning a possible closure in April! It was all very much in the conditional mode, and we suspected it might have been a bluff (to lobby into reducing costs, e.g. rent). However, as we moved to mid-January, the possibility of closure seemed more and more serious. It was only in the last week of January that local management was told the shop would close in February. And on a personal level, I only found out the exact date of closure three days prior to it (despite being heavily involved in the shop).
On the documents side of things, the decision of closure was made by the line manager, who wrote a laughable piece of rubbish called "proposal for change". I don't have access to it, but have read it and it was utterly wrong in many places. Bits of it have been copy-pasted into the reply I got from Oxfam HQ, so they are included below. Following this, local management helped by the shop team wrote a counter-proposal, which took a lot of effort, and was pointing out some of the points to be wrong, or irrelevant. The said proposal was probably skimmed through and replied to with the same attention as my letter of complaint.

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The original letter of complaint
 The letter I have sent out is roughly based on the following template I had written. It was manuscript, so I have no way to give the word-by-word letter I sent.
Dear Madam, dear Sir,
My name is ___________, and I am a customer of the Oxfam campus shop situated at Warwick Uni. Or rather, I used to be - since it has been closed in an impressively short timeframe, even though it was, to my understanding, making quite a lot of profit. Whilst I understand why shops that are actually losing money get closed, I fail to see why such a decision could be made under the circumstances, and believe it is my right, as a customer and a friend of the shop, to know why Oxfam Trading decides to lose this source of profit.
The existence of a campus shop (the only one remaining, to my knowledge), had not only financial advantages, but also image consequences, by showcasing fairtrade products and Oxfam campaigns - let alone associating the friendly atmosphere found in the shop with the charity. If a closure was indeed inevitable, as I hope you will be able to show me, then surely the timeframe could have been handled in a better way; for I am sorry to tell you that, from the customer's point of view (I only found out about the shop's closure one week prior to its final opening day!) the decision feels rushed and not properly thought over; and, sadly, even though I personally still believe in Oxfam as an international development and relief charity, I am afraid that the way things have been handled will have negative consequences on the image of the charity as a whole.
Finally, I want to ask this - if there is any possibility of a new Oxfam shop opening at Warwick University in the near future? Judging from the way the previous shop is dismantled, I doubt it will be possible to reopen the same shop; still, a new shop would be really fantastic.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Best regards,

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Oxfam's answer
 Dear Pierre (...)
The decision to open or close a shop is always very carefully considered, and all the business factors are taken into account. Our shops exist to make as much money as possible to support Oxfam's work to overcome poverty and we have to be confident that every shop can be successful in that aim. However, we are also keen to try shops in new locations and to welcome new customers and supporters to Oxfam.
In the case of the Warwick shop we were, of course, hopeful that the setting would be successful for an Oxfam shop and that the shop would benefit, as you rightly point out, from a large student population.
However, the income of the shop did not meet the requirements for lease renewal, even though a lot of progress had been made to improve performance. This was due to a number of factors including:

You may know that there is an Oxfam Bookshop in Coventry city centre. This is a well established shop and we believe that sales at this shop were affected by the University shop. We therefore hope to continue to build the success of the shop in Coventry and we hope that students will be pleased to use this shop and even consider volunteering in the shop.
I cannot comment as to whether there might be an Oxfam shop on campus again, but I can confirm that there are no plans at the present time.
I'm sorry that the decision process was so unusually shortened, and that those involved in the shop had such little notice of the closure. I'd like to thank you for volunteering in the shop, Pierre, and for your support of Oxfam.
With best wishes,

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My answer to that
 [Formatting will be dealt with at some later point, can't bother to put the html markups now] Dear Pippa,

in the light of your recent email, I am left to wonder whether there was any point in the shop team writing a counter-proposal following the initial "proposal for change", as most of your reply is, nearly to the exact word, taken from the original proposal for change, including points that are blatantly wrong (e.g. "stock was brought in from other shops at a cost" - whereas the shop has not paid for any transfer since January 2007, i.e. over a year before the closure) and have been pointed out to be so in the counter-proposal.

I will now address each of those points. It might remind you of the counter-proposal (after all, I did help to write it); but at least in my case it will be a new formulation.
* the shop is "next to a nightclub and bars" / Visibility. The said nightclub, presumably the Marketplace, is also used for daytime events, admittedly not on a daily basis. The "shopping complex" you're referring to is, presumably, Costcutters, which is the only off licence on campus. However, the real heart of the Union build's, including the Post Office, the chemist, three banks and ATMs and a hairdresser (between others), had two main accesses: one that could be designed as the Rootes access, which, admittedly, offered little visibility to the shop; the other one was the said "walkway", and was in my experience as a student at Warwick the one which was most used by students, as it was the one nearest to the main campus (arts centre, costcutters, academic buildings, chaplaincy, ...). As a result, the shop had a lot of visibility, contrary to what the copy-pasted text implies.
On a personal level, I found out about the shop in the first couple of days that I was in Warwick, and started volunteering only a couple of weeks after that, despite no prior knowledge of Oxfam on my part. This also shows how much the shop was showcasing the charity. As for the lack of benefit taken from the "nightclub" activities, the limited consequences of the shop being closed when parties were happening have already partially been addressed in the counter-proposal, and were in all fairness beside the point. The events we're talking of are no cultural events - but real dancing and drinking themed events. The state of the Union after such events leads me to think leaving the shop open to inebriated, excited customers might have been more damaging to the stock than the revenue from potential customers that night; however, the shop was visible from inside the "nightclub" (one door was actually leading to the dancefloor) and, considering "clubbers" were mostly living on-campus, or at least studying there; the shop was actually benefitting from this. And just to stress how ridiculous that comment was, the Arts Centre, in which the University Bookshop was located, staged cultural events at night too (which are more likely to bring customers willing to buy books); however, the said bookshop (which might have benefitted from staying open then, if one follows your argument), quickly found that there was little point and was closed at night (they actually had more limited opening hours than we did).
Local competition.
The secondhand book scheme by the Bookshop was put in place in 2006, and to my knowledge we didn't suffer from it. Another secondhand scheme, on a marketplace basis, was started by the Education Officer for october 2007. Again, we did not suffer much from it, as the sales figures were definitely up from the previous year.
Regarding the good in quantity, not in quality argument - I presume the view is biased by the exceptional situation of the Room Clearances. It has to be said that the person who wrote the proposal for change last visited the shop in the middle of the room clearances, where the sheer quantity of donations was impressive (if memory serves, 5,000 green bags had been given out to people living on campus, and the amount that came back was surprisingly high). Obviously, with such a peak in donations, the sorting had to be efficient; and storage issues (despite Warwick Accommodation giving us a whole house for temporary storage over the summer) meant that we sent clothes to Wastesaver, or for transfers, that we would have kept under normal circumstances. Thus, the figures of "rejected material" are accordingly high, and were perceived to be so by the person who wrote the proposal for change. But in spite of some bags with real poor quality (some may have mistaken them for binbags), the overall quality was really good. The major problem was what to do with those donations - there were some electricals, including two keyboards, a TV, ... that we were not legally allowed to sell; as well as some homeware which was not in the shop's line of products. Donations in books were good in quantity as well as quality - they filled two student rooms from floor to ceiling after sorting; and there was even more 'good' clothes. (over 100 bags of clothes were distributed to the network by private transport, and over two tonnes of relatively good quality clothes were sent to wastesaver). And, at the risk of repeating myself, no paid transfer was done since January 2007. On the contrary, thanks to dedicated and car-equipped/bus-commuting volunteer force, stock could be transferred to Kenilworth, between others, at no cost to Oxfam.
Regarding volunteers, they were always going to be an issue, and that is in my opinion the most valid point regarding the shop's closure. I have always personally been of the opinion that the move to make the manager part-time was a bad move, as it was going to have an incidence on shop's opening hours. I'll admit that the shop's volunteer basis is unusual - it can be seen as a core team of highly dedicated volunteers, and many more-or-less-regular volunteers; with no midpoint between them. The fact that it was student-led implied high seasonality; however, the presence of a core team counter-balanced the effects of this seasonality. As an example, I have been found to volunteer over 20 hours a week in the shop, because I actually enjoyed working in the shop. Other dedicated volunteers got "promoted" to shiftleaders allowed the shop to work smoothly. In addition, seasonality of volunteers was, except for the first week of the academic year, very similar to the seasonality of customer presence (based on Costcutter's breakdown of sales); thus limiting the impact of forced reduced hours.
I can only stress here that the said reduced hours did not mean irregularity! There was an exceptional few days when the shop had to stay closed, admittedly; however, for most of the summer, the shop ran smoothly on reduced hours. The fact that the breakdown of our sales showed higher percentage than Costcutters outside term goes to show that we still attracted customers outside term.

I do know Andy's shop in Coventry city centre, and have been there; however, its stock and Warwick Uni's were much different, and in all honesty, we priced similar items higher than the Coventry bookshop (which could easily be noticed when repricing books from transfers, which I will stress again were done at no cost to the network as it was transferred by volunteers on the bus). So, if anything, students who would go to Coventry at all, would have gone there when the campus shop was still open, and Coventry city centre was reducing our NSC rather than the contrary. I do hope that the Coventry figures will go up, but sadly I don't believe they will. The proposal for change clearly omitted the opening of hard-discount bookshops in the city centre, which may have more to do with Coventry's NSC dropping.
Finally, I notice that you don't address the reasons of the timeframe of the events - you just say that you are sorry that the decision process was "unusually shortened", thus acknowledging the exceptionality, but without giving any reasons for the rush; nor do you address my point of image deficit resulting from the closure of the shop.
So much for the specifics about the Warwick campus shop - now as a more general question, if, as you say, the "shops exist to make as much money as possible to support Oxfam's work [with others!!!] to overcome poverty [and suffering!!!]", why close a successful shop? I have difficulties to believe that the Coventry bookshop's NSC dropped by more than £15k , nor that managing costs, once the shop was attached to the Birmingham network, would exceed that! So, in the end, from my point of view, you cut a source of revenue (and one that was showing growth at that!)
Also, I'd like to be explained what the point is in giving to local management targets that are, seemingly, ridiculously low as compared to what is actually expected of the shop (Oxfam @ Warwick Uni was hitting, even exceeding, the yearly targets that had been set for it). This makes no sense under the philosophy to make as much money as possible, given that it leads the manager to make long-term plans (marketing, website, ...) that will in the end not pay out.

I appreciate you took some time to answer, and thank you for your time; however, I do feel insulted, as you chose to blatantly ignore the corrections given by the counter-proposal, and possibly believed I would take the bait, despite you knowing how involved in the shop I was. Admittedly, you did not know that I had read the original proposal for change, so you couldn't expect me to recognise copy-pasted bits from it; however, you couldn't expect me to not find most of the arguments ridiculous.
As for my discussion with Jenny, we did not go through the details of the real reasons for the closure; except that I've overheard "new" shops were "meant" to make around £40k NSC, which does not fit with the theory that any source of income is good. We were mostly talking about the future of the shop; including the shocking fact that transfers from Warwick Uni to other shops would still be charged to F2317. I say "real reasons", because the alternative is that Oxfam Trading is inefficient and chooses to believe someone who's been twice in the shop over its manager on local points; or even worse does not read or offer any consideration to documents it asks be produced.

With regards,

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Oxfam's "eff off and die" reply
 Dear Pierre,
thank you for your response to my email about the closure of the Warwick University shop. It is not an easy decision, but I'm sure you can appreciate that we do have to look at the wider picture as well as the local factors in such decisions, with the overall aim of developing our business to make the most income for Oxfam's work. I regret that as the shop is now closed, we cannot continue to debate the reasons for closure.
As I said in my reply to you, we very much value your contribution to the Oxfam shop in your time at Warwick.
Your feedback and concerns will be recorded, and I would, again, thank you for taking the time to give us your views.
With best wishes,

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I still reply
 Dear Pippa, As much as I can understand there is little point in debating in detail the specifics of the reasons for closure of the Warwick Uni shop posterior to it, I strongly believe there was a point in it beforehand, and was more shocked to see that the counter-proposal was not taken into account at all. Going on a "learn from one's mistakes" basis, I am of the opinion that, if not the factors, then at least the process leading to what I still see as an absolute mess-up, should be analysed.
My previous email was not meant as a debate on the specifics - those were only given to show you that I am aware in some detail of the situation and could not believe the reasons you brought forward were the actual reasons for closure. I admit the size granted to this part was slightly bigger than it ought to, but I was feeling too insulted to just let this go without commenting, and must have gone into too much detail. The focus of my previous email was about the closure process, and can be summed up in the following three questions, which I hope you will be able to give me an answer to:
  1. Why was the timeframe so unusually short, as you admitted in your first email?
  2. What was the point of asking for a counter-proposal to be written, if the said document was in all evidence not read/taken into account by senior management?
  3. Why give local management different targets than what is actually expected?

I would appreciate it if I didn't get a general PR talk as an answer, as the questions are quite specific, and at least the first one is not rethorical. So in prevention, I know retail is going through a hard time, and I know there is a bigger picture to keep in mind (though, how big does it get before you lose any notion of detail?)
I cannot stress how much I can appreciate mistakes can be made, especially in such a large organisation as Oxfam; and that internal politics also, sadly, have a role to play - and that is acceptable. What I do not accept is for Oxfam to not recognise its mistakes and patronise its customers/volunteers by giving them ready-made PR sentences.
With regards,

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Oxfam's final answer
 Note: this answer is not written by the same person as above; Jenny Baker is the area manager for the Birmingham shops network. She was not the one who wrote the original "proposal" that led to the closure of the shops; however, she dealt with the actual closure, and as far as my understanding goes, had to take over a process that was already in motion and had some momentum.

Dear Pierre,
In answer to your questions:
  1. The timeframe was very short because we had to action the break in the lease by the 29th of December. A business case for the closure had been prepared during the summer, although I am not sure why Austin wasn't involved in this. The line manager at the time was then appointed for a new post and there was nobody in place to follow through on the business case. At some point, I suspect in early December, the Estates Surveyor brought the break in the lease to someone's attention, and the decision to close the shop was finalised. I do not know when this happened or who made the ultimate decision, as I was not involved at that stage. I was informed on 21st December that I would be responsible for the physical closure of the shop.
  2. I read the counter proposal several times in order to understand the points Austin was trying to make. It was very lengthy and short of the financial detail that was required, and I had requested. I did my own, separate, research into the shops financial history as the detail was missing from the counter proposal. An established bookshop makes sales per module of around £70 per module, an average bookshop around £55 a module. The Warwick Uni shop was making £25 a module.
  3. I did not see the business case that was done in order to open the shop. When I do a business case for a potential shop I detail exactly where the money is going to be made by each department. If the target is particularly challenging it may take a few years to achieve it so year on year growth would be factored in to show that the shop will achieve its target in year X. The target income for the Warwick Uni shop was £45K, as is with all new acquisitions. As the shop only made an NSC of £3,352 in its first full year it would be unrealistic to expect it to have a budgeted NSC of £45k in its second year. I would question whether the shop should ever have been opened at all. The original business case should have shown it was capable of achieving an NSC of £45k and it was clearly nowhere near this.

Thank you for your interest and concern over the closure of the Warwick shop. I hope this concludes the matter.
Yours sincerely,

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Comments
 This last email is (at last!) to the point and answers most of my concerns. I can actually now see where the idea to close the shop originated from: average per module, in all probablility; and paperwork that, when done, did not always give a very faithful image of the shop. Clothes were outdoing books, and I do not know if in the said paperwork, clothes were actually taken in (modules being in my mind more books modules). More specifically, the NSC figure is all costs deducted; and we were doing very well on new products (Cards, Fairtrade) which were centrally ordered; thus making a benefit for Oxfam that didn't show up on the shop's figures.
A series of unfortunate misunderstandings is probably what doomed the shop. Not informing local management that a proposal for change is being written, nor involving them in the process, makes very little sense; however, I can accept that such things happen, especially given the special situation of the Warwick Uni shop.
Regarding the targets, I am willing to give senior management in Oxfam the benefit of the doubt; and to believe it was a matter of poor communication.
The closure of the shop is clearly a sad event. But the process that led to it is understandable.
I still wonder why the original email was not more to the point, maybe still lack of communication between HQ and intermediate management?