Salvation Army opens the doors to new Morecambe charity shop

The new Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd (SATCoL) charity shop welcomed its first customers to Morecambe’s Arndale shopping centre on Thursday 23rd July.

The opening ceremony was a hit with eager Arndale shoppers, as they watched The Salvation Army’s Captain Mark Spencer, accompanied by his wife, Captain Jane Spencer, give his blessing and cut the ribbon, officially opening the new shop.

A crowd of shoppers had gathered outside the shop by 10:30am, ready to root through the range of bargains on offer, and the friendly team of SATCoL staff and volunteers enjoyed a very busy first day of trading.  SATCoL’s Area Manager, Ann Penny, was delighted to see so many members of the local community coming together: “The new shop is in a fantastic central location and we’ve received so many lovely positive comments. We had a very successful first day – people were in and out of the changing rooms, and the handbags in particular were flying off the shelves!”

Ann continued: “We are always looking for volunteers to join our team at the shop and we’d like to encourage anybody who’s 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