Customer info
What's it all about?
As any parent or caregiver knows, kids grow out of their belongings around 10 times quicker than the item's lifespan, meaning you have to clear out perfectly good stuff and rebuy them slightly bigger every three to six months. Times are hard for families at the moment, with prices rising on basically everything, so more people are looking to sell their preloved items rather than give them away.
We have stalls available for anyone to hire to sell their preloved goods. Think of it as a kid's car boot sale! You might just make someone's day with all the stuff that's been cluttering your wardrobe for months. As the saying goes, one person's junk is another person's treasure!
As well as preloved stalls, we have stalls for homemade and crafted items. We want to provide an opportunity for local creative geniuses to exhibit and sell their wares without the hefty overheads.
The community aspect
Buying and selling your preloved goods in person means you can see exactly where your kids old favourite toy is going, and where your kids new favourite jumper has come from. You can find out from the local crafts people about the products they've created and what's inspired them. Conversations can be had, stories swapped and maybe even connections made.
Equally, if you don't want to talk, that's ok too :)
Environmental benefits
After two years of keeping a distance from other humans, online retail and selling preloved items through social media and apps has served us well. We could buy anything we desired, old or new, at the click of a button. However, shopping from your sofa has it's downfalls...
It's super bad for the environment. During covid, internet sales (as a percentage of total retail sales) jumped from 18% to 37.1% by January 2021, a growth rate that would have taken a decade to reach had it not been for lockdown. The scary fact is that delivery vehicles represent 15% of total vehicle miles travelled in the South East, but 34% of nitrogen oxide (NOX) and 27% of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions.
With online sales unlikely to drop back to pre-covid levels, cities face the challenge of balancing surging consumer demand for home deliveries with a need to improve air quality and reduce traffic noise and congestion. The government is working towards making all vehicles electric, but we're not there yet. Until then, harmful gases will continue to be pumped into the air we breathe until the goal is reached.
No, a community market won't save the world or magically fix this, but providing a space for people to buy and sell could perhaps convert a few digital shoppers back to analog.