Fashion with purpose: How Charity Super.Mkt is fuelling consumer interest in preloved clothing

We are writing this from Charity Super.Mkt’s buzzing opening party in St James Quarter, the lifestyle district at the centre of Scotland’s capital.

DNC Radio DJ’s are playing a great Northern Soul set and the queues for the changing rooms and the tills are testament to a concept whose time has come.

The Charity Super.Mkt is a concept for social and environmental good, where people can shop

the best of charity retail all in one place. A mix of household names and local favourites,

brought together as a purposeful collective. Our aim is to make charity retail mainstream by getting into the spaces and places charities could otherwise not reach. We do this through our amazing network of people and organisations who trust that Charity Super.Mkt will deliver one of the

most purposeful and best second-hand fashion experiences on the market.

After opening stores in London, Bristol and Reading, we chose St James Quarter as home to our second ever store in Scotland due to Edinburgh’s significant student population, with Gen Z and Millennials currently fuelling the renaissance in pre-loved shopping. In Edinburgh, charities such as Shelter, Four Square and Children’s Hospices Across Scotland are benefitting from St James Quarter’s high footfall, thanks to its prime location in the heart of the city centre.

Charity Super.Mkt’s business model revolves around repurposing old and unwanted clothing, finding new homes for clothing whilst passing on significant financial benefit to causes across the social and environmental spectrum along the way. This concept is creating a risk-free model for charities where, unlike usual retail, there is no lease or obligation to remain in store. We provide the space, managers, shopfit, signage, marketing and music, thus removing the overheads typical to charities' usual stores and creating the opportunity to collect around 80% from sales.

For many charities, this is a more profitable business model that generates greater income for their causes, including children's charities, end of life care, research into cancer, care for the elderly, child welfare, tackling homelessness, poverty alleviation, animal welfare and a whole lot more. What is more, charity retail is the pioneer of sustainable business, there is no better example of a green circular economy in action at this scale.

Across the UK, charity retail brings in £746m, benefitting innumerable social causes and is one of the best examples of the circular green economy at scale. As a sector, charity retail is putting over one billion wearable garments back into use every year, reducing textile waste and saving 7 million tonnes of carbon emissions. The UK’s 11,200 charity shops also double up as reuse points where anyone can pass on wearable clothes for someone else to use. All this while creating local employment and providing volunteering opportunities. There are no other retailers out there creating such huge social, economic and environmental value at this scale.

There is a well-documented cost of living crisis in the UK, there has been a shift in consumer spending habits driven by tightening wallets as well a desire to shop sustainably. The sales growth of charity retail far outstrips other retail sectors with year-on-year increases of 7% (figures from Charity Retail Association) which could indicate many people are discovering charity shops for the first time.

We are both immersed in second-hand, with a combined eighty years of knowing and loving all things charity shop and have collaborated on a number of projects over the years. In 2002, we worked together bringing second-hand clothes right into the mainstream which saw the charity TRAID supplying Topman's flagship Oxford Street store with vintage clothing and TRAID’s upcycled clothing label TRAIDremade.

We might be immersed in charity second-hand, but stats speak for themselves:

60% of people in the UK now wear something second hand with 80% of people sourcing their second-hand purchases through charity shops (ThredUp Resale Report)

Conscious shopping is no longer an alternative lifestyle, it’s a mainstream choice – one driven by social and environmental values. A 2020 survey from GlobalData found that 45% of shoppers are actively searching for sustainable products, goods and services citing that second hand clothing and fashion is seen as more accessible and inclusive than sustainable fashion. 2/3 consumers state they aspire to buy more second-hand fashion

And this is evident in Charity Super.Mkt’s results from the first 6 months:

Total Sales by the charities (£) 839,028.24.

Pre Loved Items Sold 88,710

Weight stopped going to Landfill (Tonne) 25.35

Co2 being diverted (Tonne) 228.11

Volume of Water being saved (Cubic Metres) 40,553.14

Through our results from the first 6 months:

Shelter will be able to pay for an additional 2,000 webchat housing advice calls

Money raised by Cancer Research will fund 192 more days of Cancer Nurses

TRAID will use its proceeds to support a new project providing schooling for the children of waste pickers at Dhaka’s Matuail landfill site

Local charities have generated an average selling price 21% higher than its high street shops, enabling more money going to provide residential care for the elderly

Hospices have been able to fund an associate community nurses to deliver care to a patient in their own home 600

So help us to make these statistics even more impressive by stopping by our store on level 3 at St James Quarter (oh and feel free to bring a bag of good quality clothing that maybe surplus to your requirements!)

Maria Chenoweth CEO Traid and Wayne Hmreingway Partner Hemingway Design Co-founders Charity Super.Mkt www.charitysupermkt.com

Additional background information

With a combined eighty years of knowing and loving all things charity shop Maria Chenoweth CEO of the charity TRAID and Wayne Hemingway partner at HemingwayDesign are challenging why there is still a stigma when it comes to charity shops on our UK high streets.

Maria Chenoweth has worked in charity retail for over 30 years and is the CEO of TRAID. TRAID is all about the social and environmental impact of our clothes, its large sized, well designed, fitted out charity shops support purposeful global projects such as funding 2% of global organic cotton production.

Wayne Hemingway started his first business selling second-hand clothes on Camden Market in 1981, the proceeds funded the iconic fashion brand Red or Dead. Today HemingwayDesign is a multi-disciplinary design agency, working on town centre regeneration and designs the Shelter Boutique charity shops. HemingwayDesign instigated Britain’s national festival of sustainability , The Festival of Thrift ,and the iconic Classic Car Boot Sale as well as Britain’s largest free vintage festival , Vintage by the Sea

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Both started their second-hand journey growing up in seaside towns (Clevedon and Morecambe) and small towns (Blackburn) where access to disposable income and fashion shops was limited. It was down to jumble sales, surplus stores, and charity shops to provide the clothes to get dressed up and go out dancing.

Chenoweth and Hemingway have collaborated on a few projects over the years. Initially Hemingway’s love and career of second-hand clothes led him to be a critical friend to TRAID and the face of its launch in 1999, Hemingway also regularly promoted TRAID and second-hand clothes at his regular slot on channel 4’s iconic Big Breakfast show. Being well ahead of the time, in 2002 they worked together bringing second-hand clothes right into the mainstream which saw the charity TRAID supplying Topman's flagship Oxford Street store with vintage clothing and TRAID’s upcycled clothing label TRAIDremade.