Donations needed for revamped family store

After six weeks of renovation, the Salvation Army Family Store in Richmond has reopened and it now needs donations to fill its new space.

The Queen St store reopened on Saturday with a sausage sizzle and its own Salvation Army brass band played to herald the occasion.

Area manager for the Top of the South and West Coast, Monique Palmer, says the renovation is designed to make the process faster, more efficient and therefore a better experience for donors dropping goods off at the store.

Now, a large area is set aside solely for receiving donations on one side of the building, while the other side is devoted to customers searching through racks and shelves for goods they want to rehome.

Leading up to the renovation, the store had a ‘garage sale’ to clear out as many donations as possible, so Monique says it now needs donations to restock.

“We take everything; we don’t cherry pick through donations. It’s important we make it easy for our donors to donate and it’s not up to us to judge something that could be quite personal to them. We’re very lucky and thankful that donors support us and it comes back to that donor experience – if you have a good donor experience, you’ll come back.”

She says the location for the store is “fantastic” which made the renovation worthwhile, and it sits in a “charity precinct” which makes it easy for shoppers doing the op-shop circuit.

“It’s quite cool to op shop, and it’s soft on your budget and you’re doing something good for your community because every dollar you spend goes back into your community.”

Like many charities, she says more volunteers are needed to work in the store.