Many people do their shopping on a Saturday as they can’t manage to get to the shops during the week. Our Saturday Shop customers are no different, except we only open for a few hours on a Saturday morning (about 46 weeks of the year) and they really have to get there early to grab the bargains.
This simple but effective income generator has now given us £68,000 in direct income, plus about a further £10,000 through our Ebay sales. It also provides many of the items we sell at our May Fair and Winter Bazaar.
In addition (as if one were needed) we regularly support a whole host of local charities with two free tables from which they can sell their goods.
Recycling, outreach, income generation, drop-in centre, community facility, charity support and much, much more. We started in April/May 2002 using the empty Vicarage and it took time for sales to pick up. Father Jimmy quoted Field of Dreams and said “People will come” and, true enough, they did.
Nowadays we get disappointed when we “only” take £150 but in the early days we thought £30 was good. Are we getting greedy? Maybe a little as we want things to be extra successful but overall a simple idea has produced extraordinary results. All I wonder is why more churches don’t follow the idea. If we can do it, most of them could. On the other hand maybe we should keep quiet now and continue to reap the benefit.
Thank you to all those that help to make the Saturday Shop possible.
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