Red Cross Blogs

A fine notion

By Izzi Whelan
June 12, 2009 at 9:04 am

I recently met one of our charity shop managers, who let me in on the crafty idea she’s come up with to shift unsold clothes – stripping off all the buttons, beads and sequins to sell as haberdashery notions.

Amanda, the manager in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire, told me how they hit on the idea after Christmas, when they were left with a less-than-delightful heavily sequinned top that hadn’t sold – even for £2. A volunteer took it home and removed all the sequins, which they then bagged up and sold, making far more money than they’d have ever got from the top itself.

Amanda and her team now strip everything, even zips and elastic, from the clothes they can’t sell. The material still gets sold on to the rag men, like other unwanted clothes, so the charity still profits from every donation, even if it’s not quite right for selling in the shop.

If your local charity shop hasn’t picked up on the idea, it’s not that hard to do yourself, so next time you find yourself rifling through the rails at your nearest Red Cross shop, keep an eye out for anything you could transform from hideous to useful with just the help of a stitch unpicker.

---

Comment (0) »

---

Tags: charity shops, craft, sewing

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 9:04 am and is filed under Fundraising and events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---