Salvation Army opens its doors to new Mexborough charity shop

published on 2 Jul 2015

Dozens of eager bargain hunters gathered at the new Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd (SATCoL) charity shop in Mexborough to celebrate its first day of trading as the shop at 43-54 High Street opened its doors to the public.

The opening ceremony was a huge success with Mexborough’s vibrant local community as The Salvation Army’s Yorkshire shops chaplain, Major Ray Mackereth, cut the ribbon to officially open the new shop.

The till was ringing, with the team putting through 75 transactions in the first hour of opening alone, as dozens of people come in through the doors to explore the bargains on offer, helping to raise valuable money for The Salvation Army.

SATCoL’s Area Manager, Linda Mayers, was delighted to see so many members of the local community coming together: “We’re really pleased to be establishing a stronger presence in the town, and it’s fantastic to see the shop being so well received by the people of Mexborough who joined us to show their support for The Salvation Army.”

Linda continued: “We are always looking for volunteers at the shop and we’d like to encourage anybody interested to pop in and talk to our friendly staff. There’s a whole range of tasks to get involved with, including merchandising, steaming and hanging clothes, ticketing and coding and we provide training on all aspects of the work. We rely on the generosity of our volunteers, so if you think you can spare any time at all, from a few hours to a few days a week, please do get in touch.  

“We’re always grateful to accept donations from the public, whether it’s clothes, shoes, accessories or homewares. We only ask that items are clean and in good condition.”

Profit from the sale of donated clothing contributes to the valuable social welfare work of The Salvation Army, including homelessness and addiction services, care for older people, help at emergency incidents, support for adult victims of human trafficking in England and Wales, a Family Tracing Service and much, much more. Over the last five years alone SATCoL has donated over £39.5 million to The Salvation Army.

Customers visiting the new shop will be offered one of SATCoL’s innovative loyalty cards. The free ‘re:ward’ card rewards customers each time they spend £5 in the shop or donate their unwanted items using one of the shop’s reuseable ‘re:bags’.

Each time a customer spends £5, one side of their re:ward card will be stamped, with 10 stamps entitling them to a £5 credit to spend in the shop. On the other side of the card is the reward scheme for donations, which works in conjunction with a re:bag – a reusable black, white and red bag that can be bought at the shop for 99p. Each time a re:bag is brought into the store full of donations, a stamp to the value of £2 will be given.

For more information on SATCoL charity shops visit here