Oxfam Shops
We opened first Oxfam shop in 1948 at 17 Broad Street in Oxford and it is still open today.
We couldn’t do this without the support of over 22,000 amazing shop volunteers who helped us raise nearly £90 million towards Oxfam’s work last year.
In 1987, we opened the first Oxfam charity bookshop in St Giles, Oxford. We now have 148 specialist bookshops and sell up to 1 million books every month.
Oxfam shops also sell new products, such as Fairtrade food and gifts. Every single new product we stock helps create positive futures for people. Last year, profit from sales of Oxfam’s new products was £3.2 million.
In 2007, we had another first when we launched the UK’s first online charity shop. The Oxfam Online Shop is supplied with items by over 200 Oxfam shops and hubs across the country. Over 100,000 donated and new items, from vintage clothing through to the latest fiction are for sale online.
Did you know… no clothing goes to landfill?
Oxfam is the only charity retailer to operate its own specialised sorting facility, Oxfam Wastesaver, which maximises revenue from textiles that cannot be re-sold in our shops.
Clothing is collected from our shops and donation banks and sorted before being moved to the most suitable market, including:
• being redistributed to other Oxfam high street shops, the Oxfam Online Shop or the Oxfam Festival Shop
• sold for reuse overseas, for example we sell heavy winter clothing to Eastern Europe
• low-grade items are sold to recycling companies which use them as mattress or upholstery filler
• a small amount is incinerated, which creates energy for the local community.
Summer clothing is sold to a social enterprise run by Oxfam in Senegal, called Frip Ethique (meaning “ethical second hand clothingâ€Â), which provides employment for local women sorting and selling clothes in the local area. All the profits are invested back into Oxfam’s projects in Senegal.
All of this amazing work wouldn’t be possible without the generosity of people who donate goods for us to sell. There are many ways for you to donate to Oxfam apart from via your local shop:
• in our donation banks in all Sainsbury’s car parks
• in your local M&S store, shwop an old item when you buy a new one
• if you donate an item of M&S clothing in your local Oxfam shop we’ll give you a £5 M&S voucher
• encourage your workplace to join Oxfam Collects and we’ll collect it from you!
If you sign up to Tag Your Bag when you donate to our shops we will write to you to tell you how much your goods have raised and the impact that could have on Oxfam’s work around the world. For example:
• one paperback sold by Oxfam could buy two books for a school in Somaliland
• one T-shirt sold is enough to pay for a water container for 4 families in Niger
• one jacket and one T-Shirt sold is enough to provide training for a beekeeper in Ethiopia, to help improve the amount and quality of the honey produced and therefore, their profits
• one suit and one coat sold is enough to provide potentially life-saving safe hygiene training for a pupil or teacher in Zambia.
