General merchandise wholesaler DollarDays has found a way to give as well as receive. The web-only wholesaler expanded its customer base last year to include small and medium-size businesses and entrepreneurs, while it helped nonprofit organizations stretch their purchasing power. Those efforts contributed to a 40% sales increase in 2016 and helped DollarDays become a finalist for the 2017 B2BecNews B2B Marketer of the Year Award.

For example, DollarDays featured backpacks, school supplies, underwear and socks during the back-to-school shopping season, while showcasing hats, gloves, jackets, toothpaste and shampoos in the Christmas shopping season.

The DollarDays.com home page and Facebook page feature monthly nonprofit giveaways of $500 shopping sprees and thousands of nonprofits were nominated each month, the company says. The giveaways and winners were then shared through social media.

The wholesaler awarded June 2016 shopping sprees to 18 school teachers; in September it granted awards to 18 animal shelters and in October it gave blankets to 25 nonprofit organizations that support homeless people. These efforts helped DollarDays become the official warehouse for 4,000 Kiwanis clubs across the country. The wholesaler has created similar warehouses for The Salvation Army, Society of Gospel Rescue Missions, Society of St. Vincent DePaul and other nonprofits. It also built co-branded websites for the Kiwanis organization; the Independent Pharmacy Alliance, a buying co-operative for independent pharmacies; and for retail organizations like second-hand apparel merchants Plato’s Closet and Once upon a Child.

DollarDays enables its customers to donate 5% of the dollar value of an order to their favorite charity. The designated charity then receives a credit equal to the donation for making purchases on DollarDays.com.

DollarDays also builds “wish list” e-commerce sites for nonprofit organizations, including churches and schools. The participating nonprofit can select 25 products it needs from among the more than 260,000 items offered on DollarDays.com. Donors to these nonprofits can purchase any of the 25 selected items, which DollarDays then ships to the designated nonprofit. Donors receive a receipt they can use for claiming a tax deduction.

Along with its 2016 revenue leap, DollarDays gained 475,000 new customers last year, which added to the more than 3.5 million users that have registered since the online wholesaler’s launch in 2001. 55% of orders last year came from customers who have bought four or more times—a customer segment that DollarDays calls “the backbone of the business.”

DollarDays does not disclose actual sales figures, but its growth continues into 2017. “Our sales growth has continued through the first quarter and our customer acquisition continues on the same pace,” says Marc Joseph, CEO.

The winner of the 2017 B2BecNews B2B Marketer of the Year will be announced June 7 during the awards dinner at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago.

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