Charity Super.Mkt, which sells secondhand clothing for a range of charities using a department store model, is expanding with a new store in a major shopping centre.
The company has today (28 September) opened a store in Bluewater shopping centre, Kent, as part of national expansion plans.
Charity Super.Mkt, which in January brought together 10 charities in Brent Cross, north London, through a “pop-up department store” made up entirely of charity shops, has sold more than 100,000 items of secondhand clothing in just six months, with sales totalling more than £1m.
It has since opened pop-up shops in Glasgow and Reading, Berkshire, and sales to date have generated £1m for 10 charities including Shelter, Cancer Research UK and Age UK.
Charity Super.Mkt said its work to date has prevented more than 29,000kg of clothes from going to landfill sites and avoided 261,409kg of carbon dioxide emissions.
The company aims to establish the brand as a household name and drive greater revenue for its charity partners.
Alongside the new store at Bluewater, which is open until 6 November, the expansion also involves stores in Edinburgh and Bristol.
The designer Wayne Hemingway, a co-founder of Charity Super.Mkt, said: “It is a mere seven months since we started on this journey to attempt to demonstrate that charity secondhand fashion could and should be part of a modern retail mix in the busiest of shopping centres.
“Not only is the concept exciting customers, allowing them to do their bit for society, the environment and their own pockets, it is creating uplifts in footfall and, most importantly, providing much needed income for charities.”
Maria Chenoweth, chief executive of Traid and co-founder of Charity Super.Mkt, said: “Charity Super.Mkt gives charities the opportunity to raise more funds, and that means more nursing time in hospices, more support for animals, more research into cancer and, in Traid’s case, more support for the people who make our clothes.”
The 10 charities involved are: Shelter, Cancer Research UK, Age UK, Marie Curie, Deaf Blind UK, Demelza, Ellenor, Havens Hospices, Pilgrims Hospices and Traid.