Mystery donor gives £500k of designer clothing to online clothing donation platform
Melanie May | 9 January 2019 | News
An online clothing donation service that helps customers sell their second-hand clothes for charity has received its largest donation of designer clothes to date.
Thrift+ received the delivery worth £500,000 last month from a donor who wishes to remain anonymous.
The donation includes over 400 pairs of shoes worth over £150,000 as well as 150 dresses, 75 bags, and over £6,000 worth of jewellery from some of the world’s most famous designers, including Stella McCartney and Victoria Beckham, as well as Valentino, Prada and Givenchy.
Items include a Gucci bag worth over £2,500, a Chloe dress worth £2,600 and a pair of Alexander McQueen boots worth £1,160.
With the Thrift+ service, people order a ThriftBox to donate their clothes in, which can be dropped off at a DPD collection point. Once received, each item is thoroughly checked for quality and authenticity, and then an algorithm uses online data of similar items to automatically value each donation to make sure it is listed for a fair price. Thrift+ photographs and uploads each item to its site.
Each item is tracked individually all the way from donation to sale, with the donor choosing from 4,000 charities to give the proceeds to. Thrift+ donates half of every sale, and eligible donors can add Gift Aid on top on this. The service also rewards donors for their generosity, keeping them updated on the status of their items, and giving them 25% of the sale price as credit for the store.
In this case, the donor has opted to waive the Thrift+ credit in this case. All proceeds of this donation will go to support the work of Dress For Success, a charity that supports women on their journey into the workforce by providing training and an appropriate outfit for women preparing for their first interviews.
The designer items are currently for sale on the site where donors can also sign up to receive a free ThriftBox to donate their clothes in. The platform is planning to launch on-demand collection into 25 cities in the UK later this year, and charities can find out more about becoming a partner on the site.
Joe Metcalfe, founder of Thrift+ commented:
“When we received this donation, we were shocked. We knew that the total value would be high as the clothes were from such high-end designers, but we had no idea that they would be worth a whopping £500,000! Our shoppers are already snapping them up – last week we sold a beautiful Louis Vuitton bag within minutes of uploading it.”
“It’s so exciting to be able to help this donor raise money for a cause that doesn’t have high street charity shops. We hope that the story of this unbelievable donation will encourage more people to donate their second-hand clothes to the specific charity that they feel a connection to.”
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.