THOMAS Vintage Charity Shop - Now Open

Jane Birch  Reflects on her first year coordinating our Charity Shop

THOMAS decided in the latter part of 2013 to explore the possibility of opening their own Charity Shop in Blackburn town centre after a successful 2 week ‘pop up’ charity shop in conjunction  with The Women’s Centre and Night Safe.

The premises were found in November with the help of Trevor Dawson Chartered Surveyors and after some lengthy refurbishment and frantic collecting of donations from a lot of very supportive people in the town the shop was ready to open in April of this year.

The refurbishment was a bigger job than first we thought, but once the main jobs were done, clients from Salford Recovery House and Blackburn 2nd Stage helped with the painting and decorating and cleaning of floors, steaming of clothes and a million other jobs that needed doing.

We have designed the shop to look quite different from other Charity Shops, we re-cycled cable drums as display tables and utilised lots of other quirky items, kindly donated by Charities@SAMS to ensure the shop had a unique look and atmosphere.

We recruited volunteers from our own THOMAS graduates and from the congregations at Sacred Heart and St. Anne’s Churches and with the inevitable Health and Safety Training and many hours learning how to use the till we were finally ready for our first day of trading.

The volunteers brought with them a variety of skills, I was lucky to have Julie with me from the start, her hard work and commitment is outstanding. She is great with the customers, always willing to have a chat and listen to their stories. She helps to organise the volunteers, and generally works tirelessly to make sure the shop is at its best.

Andrea came into the shop as a customer at first and soon asked if she could help out, she made it her mission to colour coordinate all the clothing, displaying goods in her own unique style.  She also does the window display regularly, everyone comments on how different and lovely the window looks.

The ladies from the church who volunteered with me were amazing, so willing and reliable, and so much fun to have around.

Gary mends and fixes all sorts of things, and again his reliability and cheerfulness is very much appreciated. In fact all the volunteers who have been involve over the past few months have been amazing and have contributed so much to the success of the shop.

All the volunteers pitched in ideas as some had run their own retail outlets and others had worked in other charity shops, and some like me had no retail experience at all!! So it was a real team effort from the start.

We looked round other shops to get an idea of pricing and displaying and I think all in all we did an excellent job, as we had a queue of people waiting to come in on our first day of trading.

We initially could only open the shop on 3 days a week, but recently THOMAS decided to employ a full time shop supervisor and Joyce joined us in October which allows us to have the shop open 6 days a week.

The shop has been open now for 7 months and we have a steady flow of regular customers who have got to know the  staff and the work THOMAS does in Blackburn and further a field; most people are genuinely interested in knowing where the money goes and how it supports people at our Drop In Centre and others struggling with addiction.

At the beginning we were blessed to receive a complete house clearance from a parishioner from St. Anne’s Church whose wishes were for her belongings to support THOMAS and the church, she was an avid collector of animal related items and did support a number of animal charities herself until she became ill.

Her kind donations filled the shop with animal pictures, ornaments, plates, mugs, which kept us fully stocked for months and months, and in fact we only have a few garden ornaments left.

Stocking the shop and ensuring there are enough volunteers is ongoing, some volunteers have left for paid employment which is fantastic, as part of the work we are trying to do is give people opportunities to gain employability skills and confidence and what better way than in a Charity Shop where the number of work roles and opportunities to try out different things and are endless.

We have recently linked in with our Furniture Restoration Project in Salford which can supply the shop with affordable good quality settees, chairs, stools, tables, beds, and cupboards etc. which have proved to be very popular with some of our customers, and have also helped some of our graduates moving out of our 2nd Stage housing into their own accommodation.

It is hoped the shop will continue to get support from the local community and will prove to be an asset to the THOMAS Organisation, and a valuable resource for the people of Blackburn.

Jane Birch - Charity Shop Coordinator

 

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