Second Hand Illness

Today I feel ill. I sometimes wonder if everything we get donated in is actually visible. What I mean by this is sometimes I think maybe people donate their germs. My immune system must be pretty stable and well stocked seeming as though I’m coming into contact with the public every day and their donated belongings.

We steam the clothes after hanging them to make them look presentable and I think it must release some allergens. I always get allergens, endorphins and dolphins mixed up I don’t know why as they are nothing alike.

I am definitely more sensitive to sprays and fragrances than I used to be but this is the same in any place you work, for example if you work in an office you are technically inhaling everyone’s recycled oxygen through the air conditioning unit. Same difference really you can’t hide from micro organisms, neither can you see them - they are sneaky devils!

Anyway onwards and upwards as my Gran used to say. We're not doing too bad here at the shop steady with fits and starts (another one of my Grans old sayings) we can be quiet and then it’s like a coach trip arrives.

The recent snow has had a funny effect on people they all seem hyper and incoherent, babbling wrecks muttering useless jargon everywhere I really don’t know what’s going on, is there something in the snow?

On the way to work a lorry had lost its load and caused massive delays, daredevil  1.2 Corsa drivers overtaking in freezing fog and people walking their dogs (without tartan check coats) at 6am - has the world gone mad? Admittedly I do like snow and have enjoyed walking in it, it just can be a pain travelling in it and I think that’s why I’m ill, I have exhausted myself by walking. 

It’s also been my birthday this week so I’ve had a lovely white snowy birthday I will not disclose my age as it is getting painful but let’s just say everyone here at the shop has been lovely and remembered and made real efforts with homemade cards and wine (not homemade shame I hear it’s very potent!!) and even some of our customers have brought in cards.

We sell quite a lot of craft, card making and textile books for bustling crafty fanatics and sometimes they bring in their creations for us to sell - for example a customer with disabilities makes us beautiful homemade cards to sell in our shop and they sell very well. It’s a real pleasure to be able to offer this service and sell them in our shops to make money for a great cause, a real endorphin moment!

Plug me In to 2012

Here at Autism Plus all the retail shops have been implemented with computers and the World Wide Web. It is proving very useful.

We can make our own posters, signs, keep spreadsheets of data and forms and do research on items for price checks etc. It’s all very modern but I must admit I quite liked the novelty of working in a place where this it could still be 1940 - well in the back anyway with a wireless.

I fear like anything else as soon as its modern it’s outdated and we can’t keep up. The main obstacle was finding a suitable place for this equipment as it is very sensitive and at home I’ve often found myself contemplating throwing mine through the window when it crashes and pops up with a blue screen of death. The situation is that it’s such a small premises there isn’t room to swing a cat without hurting someone or the cat, so it was a real challenge. Thankfully we were innovative and created a space and in doing so created an oasis of paperwork, files and pin boards.

It’s a real micro office now I can even sit down which is not sarcasm it is a real treat. But there was drama we couldn’t use the card machine at first as we weren’t supplied a splitter? Or something like that and our printer broke it started crunching and eating the paper it turned into a cannibal printer.

One of the guys from IT whizzed over on his motorbike with a printer in his POD and whipped it into shape. I’ve sent a number of emails now so I’m well and truly plugged in!

Return of the Blog

Belated and bloated Happy New Year!
Happy New Year and all that jazz!! I do like Jazz and the little Jazzies you can buy from the sweet shop up the road. It is very quaint and old fashioned with lots of vintage items on the shelves such as old weighing scales and what not. They often buy items from us for their displays, we are a real community shop!

But as we're in the spirit of new year and resolutions (probably most have been broken by now I just keep moving the goal posts of mine) then I’m resisting the ye olde fashioned sweet shop and thinking about, above and beyond my waist as I hardly recognise myself these days along with my ever changing hair colour, I remind myself of the “horse of a different colour” from the Wizard of Oz as I walk through a door my hair changes hair colour, seriously I do cause a stir when I dye it and it’s not even bright colours just alternates between blonde to dark brown as a rule.

Anyway I’m enrolling myself into a food diary keeping course which basically means I write everything down I eat so will be full pretty quickly. It is hard work mind, working in such close proximity to us: the oxygen is slowly replaced by air particles consisting of pastries and pasties.

Talking about smells one of the volunteers who I happen to work recently informed me she has lost her sense of smell and call still smell peoples breath but not things like sausage rolls and tulips (what an odd combination). This made me feel semi uncomfortable and self conscious as I had eaten a sausage roll and it was bloomin’ lovely and worried she may detect the smell of it on my breath and detect it that way?

The body is a funny thing and so are people, no wonder people study other people so much it must be a ongoing experiment socially, biologically and every other alley you can discover a lot about people by working here.

Like when people say in the shop when they pick something up they think would suit their friend and bellow out “Ooooh thats right up ya alley Bev!” where did that phrase come from and what does it mean being up someone’s alley!  I don’t know for sure.

I am now joined to the world of the twitterish and follow a group called “Random Useless Facts” which is pretty useful as I’m learning something because everything else I obviously know! Thanks for reading me oh and my other new year’s resolution is to learn French, bonjour et au revoir!!

What is in a name?

There are different types of shop browsers, i've listed them below.

Chatter Shoppers

These are the shoppers that walk in on their mobile phone at the top of their vocal chords and leave still on it. They don’t really look at anything just touch things and spend the entire time telling the whole world their woes and draw contents.

Rail swingers

These shoppers barge in usually sniffing up really aggressively as their nose may drop if they don’t create a temporary vacuum and these browsers rush through the rails at the speed of light browsing for designer labels. They can be quite aggressive in their approach to the rails and often scare older customers away.

Moochers

My personal favourite, the browsers who actually browse and mooch. They look at everything, often stopping for a good ten minutes reading the contents of a book until they realise they already have it at home, and these browsers usually always buy something.

Nit Pickers

Now these browsers are tricky. You can gurantee they will bring items to the till and as your about to ring them in, they inform you they have only brought it to your attention because it is a)sized wrong, b)damaged/stained etc. They keep us on our feet as much as we don’t like when we miss something they NEVER do. They never buy anything.

Jumble Stompers

Browsers who knock everything off the hangers, then walk all over it. I don’t understand this action. They kind of stomp on it infact I’ve seen grown women usually 40-55 knock an item of clothing on the floor and jump up and down thinking no one is looking.

Chud Studs

Usually always men. They walk around and “cough” or “sneeze” and out comes a piece of chewing gum straight onto the carpet and then their wife/girlfriend/child usually stands on it.

David Dickinson

These are not really browsers at all more like vultures who scour for a bargain. Bargains that are worth money to sell on and if they can get it reduced well below the label price they revel in it.

They usually have a magnifying glass (always men for some reason?!), a tape measure and usually come in couples. They buy different things which when they leave you often are left wondering if you will see the item on ”flog it” or antiques road show. Oh if you were thinking these browsers were orange they are not sorry if I misled you.

The Kings Ring

Well not long to the first Noel, a few months and it will all be over. I’ve started already on my shopping. I found a cute shop local to me selling little knick knacks and vintage inspired gifts and I’ve made a start there a bloomin good start. Can I point you in the direction of http://www.collardmanson.com while I remember it is actually my favourite shop and the reason why I’m promoting it on here is many things they stock are similar to some items we receive over the door that are not in any way associated with our charity (although they are welcome to donate if they wished, what a dream that would be for our customers). When I say similar what I mean is I had a wander in their Meadowhall stall as you do, I couldn’t help but be drawn in by its magical pull they stock lots of bespoke items such as candle holders, candle sticks, glass wear, clothing, textiles etc and its inspiring because we could display and market some of our items in a more creative way (I touched on this in the last blog) and it’s amazing that some of the things on offer in stores like this are “one off” vintage inspired items where as we on the other hand sometimes have very old or unwanted bric a brac and ornaments which would fit nice in the right setting, the world is changing and people need to see the potential in recycling and looking at things in another way. I’ve picked part of their vision “We only stock what we believe in”   which is a great line don’t you think?

A little bit like us as a manager we have to “cherry pick” the stock and offer our customers good value and good choice that we believe to be true. Charity shops have the potential to be whatever they want to be as long as they have the right attitude.

Footnotes

“The Kings Ring” note: the king of Jerusalem/First Noel, Reference to William and Kates Marriage when the ring nearly didn’t fit, our silver ring, a kings ring where people battle out their differences, conflict between people”

The case of the missing febreeze plug in

The other day I went into work after my day off and the shop didn’t have its usual lovely ocean breeze smell. Hmm I thought suspicious, so I looked down at the plug socket which was discreetly covered by a large cardboard box full of knitting patterns and I pulled it away to reveal....NOTHING.

Someone had unplugged our air freshener and stole it. I know this because none of the other staff had moved it. I was so shocked, then disheartened and then ultimately angry. Why would someone stoop so low (literally) i mean whats the world coming to...having to lock up your air fresheners, or worse alarm them. Goodness me.
Anyway rant over, last Monday we had a retail meeting, I use the word “Retail” as we are encouraged to drop the charity shop label and use Retail Shop instead which I like as it is more present and current.

More charities are using this term to describe their shops. It’s a good move but it's still perfectly ok to call them charity shops - we sell items that have been donated by kind people like yourselves which is charitable and we make money to help our charity which is very important to moving forward.

Can I just say though more and more people are stopping donating and doing car boots instead to make quick money, this is a little bit saddening  and makes it more important people that people continue to donate to charities as we still offer a great bargain and you are making a difference to a cause.

On the other hand its often very surprising people’s generosity, we have had some lovely donations lately including a nice hand painted vase which we sold for a good price, old antique clocks, vintage tea sets and more. It's great to be able to displays these creatively, for example we used an old CD rack and transformed it into a scarf rail by tying scarves and belts on, other shops I’ve seen using old rails and painting them in kitsch colours such as baby powder and blue with the organisations logo on them. I’ve seen antique mirrors draped in jewellery, old antique chests of drawers with scarves and hats peeping out the draws tempting customer’s imaginations.

I love all this free thinking creatively and if the people and charities embrace this it’s such a step forward into the modern merchandising world such as a time like this when the current demand and boom is for “other world, old fashioned” bespoke ideas and items. I use this in a loose term and many phrases have been coined to this effect and that just goes to show anything goes! 

So I look forward to the future of display as it keeps growing and growing, forget the stolen plug in.

I love the image below imagine a lovely tree like this in our shops covered in jewels and diamonds!!!!!

Just call me charity

I’ve been for a stroll in a well known town today, it’s just right. It has a main street, nice restaurants a lovely Abbey and..wait for it lots of charity shops! Yay I’m in heaven..or not. When you have numerous charity shops all in one area, from a customer’s point of view it can be a little bit of a rollercoaster ride.

The standards vary. A lot! You can go into one that looks a little shabby on the outside but inside it is set out lovely, colour co-ordinated is always nice on the eyes and smells fresh, which can be difficult when you deal with second hand clothes not because they are dirty but because they have sometimes been left a long time in an garage or attic and become a little musty, that’s why we steam the clothes and use air fresheners (my favourite things in the whole world) in the shop and good ventilation all help, most people don’t notice but I do. I sniff first before I look around. I had a good mooch around today bought a few things, but some of the more “high profile” shops are not as nice inside as some of the other charities, it's almost like they become complacent with it yet they could be sat on a goldmine! Their windows leave lots to desire and they don’t display their stock to maximum effect.

I went into one charity shop that resembled ours inside, nice layering of winter jackets with jumpers and funky scarves, little denim waistcoats over vintage 60s blouses. It’s all in the detail and this is what makes the difference - an active interest in merchandising and accessorising the stock is a key skill to obtain and it’s very important as people are more often than not-  V-I-S-U-A-L. Give them a feast for the eyes.

Can I just lay something to rest for some readers that may believe that all stock in a charity shop was previously owned by a deceased person, this couldn’t be further from the truth its nearly always women who have just had a ruffle through their wardrobes and had clear out or a clothes swapping party and want to donate to charity some of it is even current season stock with labels.

I’d say only 5% of what we have donated has the label on but sometimes people rip the tags off and don’t even wear and we end up with it so you’d be very hard pressed to actually find something that has been donated in from a house clearance of the deceased. Although we are grateful for that too that’s where we get our vintage ranges from! Recycling - were well ahead in the game. 5 years ago lots of stock would have been ragged now you see vintage boutiques and retro wholesalers popping up like daffodils in spring. If you go to Lincoln City, which is lovely by the way, there are some amazingly beautiful vintage shops which always inspire me. Market research is important too even for us charity retailers.