We have 13 shops across Wigan Borough which are run entirely by a wonderful team of about 400 volunteers.
We were devastated when we had to close our shops back in March. Our 13 shops, as well as our online sales, bring in an annual income of over £1 million which goes towards providing hospice care for some of the most vulnerable people in our towns. Thankfully, we are still selling donated items on Ebay, Depop, Discogs and Facebook Marketplace.
A letter has been sent to all of our volunteers to ask them how they feel about returning and to ask them if they have any concerns or ideas about how and when our shops could reopen. We will be listening to our volunteers and their responses will help us to plan for a phased reopening of the shops.
Re-opening Shops
Our intention is to start reopening shops one at a time as soon as we have adequate measures in place to keep volunteers and customers safe. Their safety is our priority and we will not open any of our shops until we are confident in this.
We will look at which shops have the most ‘open’ and accessible layouts to allow volunteers and visitors to social distance and will likely limit the number of shoppers and volunteers in the shops at any one time. We will also encourage people not to visits in groups.
Safety measures
Some of the measures we will put in place are putting Perspex around all of our tills and providing PPE for our volunteers such as masks, gloves and aprons to keep them safe. The shops will be cleaned twice a day which is likely to mean that opening hours will change. Our changing rooms will be closed. We are in the process of ensuring that card payments can be accepted in all of our shops. We would urge customers to use contactless payments where possible but we will also accept cash payments.
Donations and Collections
Unfortunately, for the moment, we do not intend to accept donations or to collect or deliver furniture. This is until we have planned for the safe storage and sorting of donations.
We would like to thank all of our volunteers who we have dearly missed and to thank our community who have always been so supportive. The shops are a vital source of income to the hospice and we have lost tens of thousands of pounds since they had to close. We are hopeful that the plans we are putting in place now will enable us to open the shops in order to generate precious income while keeping everyone safe.
We would encourage all our customers to support us by buying online until they can safely visit our shops again in the future.