Charity Super.Mkt, 10 months in…
This week we opened our 13th Charity Super.Mkt in Westfield White City (a giant ex-Gap store) and 14th at Westgate Oxford, it is hard to believe that it is only 11 months since we were offered our first store in Brent Cross and we planned to be open for just 4 weeks and hope to cover costs by taking £20,000 (we stayed open 6 weeks and sold around £350,000 of charity secondhand fashion!)
In those ten months, we have had large pop-up stores in Brent Cross, Glasgow, Reading and Bluewater and currently have stores open in Bristol, Edinburgh and Salford. We have had large presences at 4 festivals and 1 sustainability event and have sailed past raising £1 million for charities, sold over 150,000 second-hand items, saved over 44,000 kg going to landfill, and created CO2 savings of almost 400,000 kg, the equivalent of planting over 1300 trees.
Charity Super. Mkt has funded over 4000 hours of end-of-life care, over 2400 hours of cancer nurse care, and many thousands of telephone helpline hours. What started as a statement to demonstrate that charity retail was being somewhat undervalued by the press, council members and parts of the media is clearly a concept with legs (and very long ones at that).
It's been exhilarating, exhausting and at times debilitating but we now know that the concept works and here’s why…
The public loves it! They love the fact Charity Super.Mkt is a concept for social and environmental good, where they can shop the best of charity retail all in one place. The coming together of a number of the public’s favourite charity retailers is proving to be a “hit” with shoppers. The enormous choice on offer makes the oft “hit and miss” charity shop experience “hit and hit”.
Here’s what the public has to say:
“just made some gorgeous sustainable purchases”
“So excited for this! It's such a great concept”
“Please stay!”
“Everyone needs to know about Charity Super.Mkt!”
“The first but won’t be the last of its kind, such an innovative concept”
“loved it!”
“Hopefully there there forever”
“Great place… shame they are not permanent”
“Hopefully longer or permanently”
“Can’t believe it took so long for a concept like this to come about- amazing!”
“Paving the way to make charity retail stay”
“Please come back!”
2. Landlords can be so generous (thank you Hammerson and Landsec for getting us started and now British Land, Peel and Westfield) and their generosity is paying off with wonderful footfall uplift stats (7% uplift in Brent Cross and 24% in Media City Salford), superb media coverage (read more here) and a feel-good factor from adjacent retailers. The consumer “pull” and excitement caused by the Charity Super.Mkt concept creates significant increases in footfall and new demographics thus benefiting retail destinations.
3. The aim is to make charity retail mainstream by getting into the spaces and places charities could otherwise not reach and this is symbiotic in that it brings new customers to shopping centres (especially the hard-to-reach core Charity Super.Mkt consumer, the millennials and Gen Z’s) and introduces the shopping centre customer to second-hand charity fashion. A win-win for landlords and charities.
4. The charities love it. It makes money for charities. In many cases for a charity taking part in a Charity Super.Mkt pop-up the profit margins are greater than setting up a store on a high street. It is a new place to sell stock creating more income for charity retailers in places where they may not have access to. The risk is minimal for charities as Charity Super.Mkt operates with turnover rents and there are no long leases to sign nor stores to renovate and fit out.
What Our Charities Say:
5 . The support from our tech partner Micro.Mkt continues to be invaluable. Allowing all the participants to have live access to sales and be able to learn from other charities is truly in the spirit of Charity Super,Mkt. Having live impact stats is both motivating and really helps with comms, promoting the good that each sale holds.
6. The Charity Super.Mkt name and visual identity and all the photographic collateral and film that we have built up is bloomin brilliant (See more in our gallery here).
7. The party atmosphere created by the DJ teams excites the public (thank you Stomp Radio, the 6MS DJs, especially Dave Cooper for your support in the stores and to all those DJs and DJ collectives around the UK who are being so generous)
8. The media love it. Charity Super.Mkt is riding (and helping to propel) the crest of a wave. Charity retail and resale fashion is expected to grow 11 times faster than the broader retail clothing sector by 2025. With 65% of people now wearing something secondhand and 80% of UK second-hand purchases made through charity shops Now is the time for charity fashion to sit comfortably as a genuinely good proposition in prominent retail locations.
Now more than ever, we’re seeing people and organisations step up & do their bit to protect people and the planet. Global studies have shown that the societal direction of travel is more purposeful. We’re starting to value health, happiness, mental wellbeing and environmental impact over conspicuous consumption, profit and status. At the same time, we’re also experiencing exciting changes in our town centres with mixed-use projects becoming the norm throughout Europe. Landlords and developers are beginning to recognise the importance of diversifying the city centre experience; creating places which support the local community, protect the planet and encourage a sustainable lifestyle. What we’re seeing now is a retail revolution going on - one that’s leaving large retail units unused and empty, with landlords looking for fresh ideas. We have an opportunity to evolve these spaces to meet the needs of a changing world - to bring back the fun and excitement of our town centres and create destinations which purposefully connect communities, drive social innovation and address the climate crisis.
Charity Super.Mkt is a business model fit for the 21st century, a model of business with genuine purpose, where people, organisations and brands come together, work together and do good together. Economies of scale benefit charity retailers who can open outlets at minimal cost and with low overheads.
Everyday, we learn more about what our key players (the media/ press, new and existing customers, charities, corporate organisations and landlords) think of Charity Super.Mkt and how to make Charity Super.Mkt stores and our messaging better…
By giving total freedom to charities to stay for as long and short a time as they want/ can manage and by having charities or stock ready to take up any slack, enabling Charity Super.Mkt to extend the extremely busy opening few weeks for longer.
By charities sharing staff (and in some cases sharing delivery logistics), significant savings on overheads are being made by the charities. Charity Super.Mkt is a place where the usual business model of competition is extinct, where money spent on fashion has far-reaching benefits.
By each store's mix of household charity names and local favourites, we get the best of both worlds and that excites the public. We started off with just one local charity, but now we are aiming to level things up. It is also much easier for local charities to keep their spaces within the store well stocked.
Charity Super.Mkt is introducing a new “shopping centre” demographic to buying second-hand charity fashion, widening the sector’s appeal and creating a genuine alternative to fast fashion. Is Charity Super.Mkt the first competition to the fast fashion epidemic? If so can we scale it to have a significant positive impact on the unhealthy and damaging fast fashion addiction?
We need to build our team and take this experiment onwards and upwards.
We need to work out a more efficient and cost-effective system for fitting out the stores. Thank you M&S for lending us your warehouse/back-of-house rails for the Media City Salford Charity Super.Mkt. Fancy making that a national initiative?
We are exciting some hard-to-reach demographics that larger corporations spend £millions on trying to reach. Maybe they can start to scratch Charity Super.Mkt’s back whilst feeling good about their contribution to social value and the environment?
And finally
8. There are several spin offs/ new initiatives that are becoming obvious.
WATCH THIS SPACE !
