However this change in weather was not refl ected in our commitment to the charity, and did nothing to dampen the mood of fundraising. In October our much loved Head of Sales Barry Mooney kick-started the winters fundraising, undertaking quite the challenge to raise money for the cause. Barry signed up to compete in the Frankfurt marathon, having never ran in a marathon before and knowing the intensive training involved. Travelling to Germany aided by his two brothers, Barry secured £ 1,867,14 for the Hospital, and also surpassed his target time, crowning months of training with a tremendous result. Barry trained intensely in an effort to prepare for the marathon, and sadly missed out on the iCandy triathlon due to an injury as a result of his intensive training schedule. Barry’ s loss was a potential disaster for the team, before the day was saved by Graham Boyle who successfully negotiated the 10km run.
Our next fundraiser was the GOSH led initiative of“ Bake it better” which raised £ 100, and had us all sampling the baking skills of various staff members. We also had Mark Bradbury’ s football raffl e cards which not only raised money for GOSH, but proved a nice little earner for lucky staff members as well. The raffl e cards have so far raised £ 204, helping put further money towards our growing total.
As December arrived, and with the years target already well beaten, we wanted one fi nal fundraiser to try and push us well beyond the 50k mark. In order to do this we auctioned a special iCandy midnight pushchair, which managed to raise £ 1,909.99, with the lucky winner receiving this special pushchair in time for Christmas. You may remember marketing’ s very own Kane Watkins taking the role of lead detective in trying to hunt down this one off pushchair.
Finally, with it being the season of goodwill and giving, we purchased our Christmas cards directly from the hospital, donating £ 1000 to GOSH in order to use their logo on the cards we distribute to our retailers and media contacts, providing a nice touch to round up the years fundraising. On top of all the fundraising we have done this year, the product promotion we currently have in place which features two of our most popular products, the iCandy Peach in Primrose and the iCandy MiPeach, managed to raise a healthy £ 4,065 for the charity. With both the product promotion and the fundraising taken into account, we have managed to raise an incredible £ 55,333.28 during year one alone. This is an unbelievable amount of money, we should all be very proud to have been a part of this effort. The ambition is to try and match, if not surpass the amount of monies we raised in 2017. We already have a number of fundraisers prepared, with Rachel Cameron already scheduled to run the London Marathon! As always, if you want to raise money for GOSH through iCandy, please contact Lian and Nick from the PR Department. They will help get your fundraising of the ground, aided by the full support of the iCandy brand.