Marlborough’s newest charity shop has had a splendid Christmas with generous donations and sales enabling it to break its £1,000 minimum target for the week.
“We’ve exceeded all our expectations,” revealed Fred Chard, manager of the RSPCA shop, based in the former High Street Sony Centre. “We’ve been surprised by the generosity of the people of Marlborough.”
“Our target was to achieve at least £1,000 in the full trading week – Monday to Saturday – before Christmas, and we’ve gone beyond that. For our first Christmas here it’s gone extremely well.”
Evening and ball gowns specially bought for the opening of the charity shop have been one major attraction, customers galore pouring in either to buy or donate to the RSPCA’s North Wiltshire branch.
And now the remaining sparkling and colourful garments on a special clothes rail of their own are selling for “sale” prices ranging from £15 to £30.
“Ninety per cent of them are new and are really excellent value,” said Kathy Hole, from Avebury (pictured), who has been in charge of them. “Some of evening gowns still have their original labels on them and have never been worn.”
In fact they didn’t have far to travel to the RSPCA site, having been bought from Marlborough’s Ballgown Shop as “an investment” for its launch in October.
Sixty-year-old Mr Chard, from Swindon, who has been given the task of establishing the Marlborough store, the third after Chippenham and Swindon to be opened by North Wiltshire RSPCA, and with three more planned for the future.
They form part of a 170 charity chain throughout the country, each store separately registered to the RSPCA branch that launched it, to ensure that the funds raised are used locally for animal welfare.
“That can be anything from boarding unwanted cats to helping people who can’t pay particular vets’ bills,” he explained. “We also run a lost and found register and find homes for unwanted rabbits and smaller animals.”
His business background in food retail with the Co-op has helped to set up the store – the plan is to hand over to someone local soon – and in the New Year he will continue his current search for a permanent job.
“Unfortunately, like a lot of people, I got made redundant last year after spending over 40 years with the Co-op group,” he revealed. “Getting back into that is proving very, very difficult, especially at the level I worked at as a regional manager.”
Meanwhile, he is seeking to increase the donations of good quality clothing to the Marlborough shop, especially for children and for men, as well as bric a brac and discarded Christmas presents.
“Our customers are predominately women since they are the shoppers,” he explained. “Our problem is that we haven’t got a large amount of men’s clothing because, as you are aware, men tend to hang on to clothes a lot longer than ladies.”
“Women buy clothes and quickly move them on – and that’s a bonus for us.”
