Our Impact

What we give, how we price, and what we can actually show you. This page changes as the facts do.

The arithmetic nobody runs

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$1.25tn
5% of the world’s retail sales — every year
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$4tn
The yearly gap to fund the Global Goals (UNCTAD, 2026)
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36%
Of the UN’s 139 goal targets on track (UN, July 2026)
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5%
Of each WowStore sale — from sale one

The world sells about $28.2tn of goods at retail each year. Take a deliberately conservative average across the decade — $25tn — and 5% of it is $1.25tn a year. Across the eleven years from 2015 to 2025 that is $13.75tn: money that was never ring-fenced and never given, because nobody was asked to give it at the till. Set against it, ending world hunger costs $33bn a year (Ceres2030) and the education gap across 79 low- and lower-middle-income countries is $97bn a year (UNESCO). Both together would take about a tenth of the pot. This is a calculation about the world, not a claim about WowStore. We are one small shop. But the arithmetic is why we put the give-back on the receipt instead of in a pledge.

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5% of each sale

We give 5% of each sale — of the sale, not the profit. Profit is a number a business can engineer toward zero; a sale is a number on a receipt. After you order, you choose which of three causes your 5% goes to, and the money is paid through PayPal Giving Fund UK (registered charity no. 1110538) rather than by us.

The three causes you choose from

Each product page shows the giving. You pick the cause after you order. Every donation is paid to PayPal Giving Fund UK, a registered charity (no. 1110538), which passes it to the cause — so the transfer is not something we mark our own homework on. Our giving partner is Virtue.

How we actually work

Of the sale, not the profit

5% is taken off the sale itself. There is no margin calculation between your order and the amount given.

European wholesale, named on request

We buy from wholesalers and brands, mostly in the EU. We do not audit their factories and we will not claim we do. Ask us about any item’s origin and we will tell you what we know.

Shipped from where it is

Stock sits in several warehouses, so delivery windows differ by item. We show the real window rather than one flattering number.

What we can show you

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The number, published

We publish what 5% of our sales has come to, from the first order and at any size. A brand that only reports impact once the number flatters it is not reporting.

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No invented urgency

No countdown timers, no “only 3 left” unless the stock system actually says three, no discount measured against a price nobody paid.

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30 days to return it

Thirty days, photo-based, no paperwork maze.

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Claims we can source, or no claim

We are not carbon-neutral, we are not B Corp certified, and we do not plant a tree per order. When we can evidence something we will say it here, with the source.

Where this goes: 1% and 9%

1%
of the market, shopped this way — WowStore’s own target
9%
of merchants running the same model on our tools — the part that is not about us at all

One shop giving 5% is a rounding error against the arithmetic at the top of this page. That is the honest size of us today. So the plan was never to be the whole answer — it is to prove the model on ourselves, then hand the same machinery to everyone else: 1% of the market shopping this way, and another 9% of merchants running it on our tools. A tenth of retail with the give-back on the receipt is a different industry from the one in the UN’s scorecard.

These are targets, not achievements. We are at the beginning of them, and we will publish how far along we are the same way we publish the giving — whichever way it reads.

You pick the cause

Order first, then choose where your 5% goes. Take thirty seconds over it — it is the part of this that is yours.

 Shop the store How the 5% works