We love charity shops. They have become the backbone of the high street and offer fashion and homewares in your local community for great prices.
I am in them fairly regularly and they are my first port of call when it comes to needing clothes for myself and other household items. But when it comes to kids’ clothing, as you can probably imagine, I use ApparelXchange as much as possible.
Often people think we are a charity shop for kids, but there are some obvious - and some less obvious - distinctions between how we and how charity shops operate, and we figured it was time to share these.
As you know, ApparelXchange focuses on kids’ fashion and this is very much our speciality; our clothing and footwear ranges start at 4 years and go up to adult sizes for teenagers. We focus on kids’ clothing because we noticed there was a gap in this age range in the affordable preloved clothing market. We are all about supporting school aged children to thrive, and having the right clothing is a part of that.
Our shop and online store are fully stocked. In our lovely shop, we have a changing room, a toilet, and a fully stocked biscuit tin, because we know our customers like their children to be able to choose and try on affordable clothing - and sometimes a biscuit helps tired wee ones out.
This is where we are unique: we are focused on this product range, and we have a really big selection to choose across all ages. Plus we stock items all year around like swimwear and warm layers in store plus everything online.
Our environmental purpose is at the heart of what we do. We can all reduce our environmental impacts from clothing reuse through making secondhand purchases which displace buying new. We wash and repair the donations we receive to make sure we reuse as much as possible. Reusing in this way locally is better than exporting abroad, reducing the carbon footprint of secondhand but also doing local social good.
Another crucial part of what we do, which all our customers might not know about, is our free package service. As well as selling donated items at low cost, we also provide bespoke packages for free to local families in most need. This is our social impact - or the equivalent to a charitable cause of a charity shop. Again, it’s important to us that Glasgow resources are being used to help Glasgow families.
Because we love to reuse and love to reduce the impact of clothing on our planet, if we get items we can’t reuse, we pass them onto our partners. Baby and toddler clothes, and adult clothing and footwear that are unlikely to appeal to teenagers, are passed over to other charities we work with. We minimise what we send for rag as much as possible.
So, if you want to do something good for the local community, please donate to us, and please buy from us. We need you to continue supporting us, to ensure we can continue this work that means so much to us.