Take a look behind the scenes of Lancaster’s pre-loved clothing gem…
The Exchange is a clothes shop with a difference. It takes good quality, pre-loved clothes, shoes and accessories and sells them for you on a commission basis. Items are kept for around two months and, if they haven’t sold, you can choose to either collect them or have them sent to the charity shop on your behalf.
You can also buy and sell through The Exchange if you’re not local to Lancaster. As well as selling through the shop floor, The Exchange posts daily on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok so followers can see new items as they come in. Staff will post items out to you and, if you want to sell something, you can send it in to be sold on your behalf.
The Exchange stocks pre-loved women’s wear and unisex items in excellent condition. Staff know their market really well and will only accept clothes that they think have a good chance of selling. There’s a great mix of everything from designer labels through to curated, best of the high street pieces, including brands like Zara, Whistles, Reiss, All Saints, Boden and Joules. This also means there’s a good range of price points, from around £10-£15 all the way up to several hundred for pre-loved designer handbags from brands like Mulberry, Chloe and Chanel.
The Exchange offers the kind of full shopping experience that you’d otherwise struggle to get without travelling to Manchester or Liverpool for a big department store. There is a good range of items for different ages, from teens through to a more mature audience including dresses, tops, jeans, jackets, shoes, handbags, jewellery and accessories like sunglasses.
Items get rotated regularly to keep things fresh and seasonal and, if you let the staff know the kinds of things you’re interested in, they will message you when something comes in that they think you’ll like.
The Exchange is a fantastic idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s a great resource for anyone who loves fashion and unique, good quality clothing. Because there’s such a great range of styles and there’s only one of everything, it’s an excellent way to find items that you just wouldn’t get elsewhere, at least not without a great deal of effort and searching.
The fact that all the clothing is pre-loved makes it both inherently sustainable and excellent value, since all the items are much more affordable than they would be if they were bought from new. And, while Vinted and Depop clearly have a role to play here, The Exchange has a number of stand out advantages in this space. Firstly, because it is an in person shop, you can try things on and check for quality and fit in a way that’s just not possible when buying online. This is especially important where designer items are concerned and fakes can be hard to spot. Staff at The Exchange are very experienced at authenticating designer items so you can be absolutely sure that you’re getting a genuine item every time. So much so, in fact, that they will also help local charity shops by authenticating and selling designer items on their behalf.
Perhaps best of all, The Exchange closes the circle between buying and selling – creating a truly circular economy based on clothing that works for local people and the environment. For example, while some customers do just buy and others just sell, a large number do both: rather than collecting the income from their sales, they keep it as credit on their account which they then use to buy new pre-loved items as they come in. In this way, it’s possible to keep switching up your wardrobe without ever needing to buy new. And a similar system makes designer bags more affordable – The Exchange offers payment schemes where you can put down a deposit towards a bag that you like and then pay off the remaining balance gradually by selling items through the shop.
The Exchange has a very loyal base of customers, many of whom regard the shop as their own “best kept secret”. However, while this might be a special feeling for the individual, shops like this rely on people spreading the word. This is particularly so in the current climate, where the costs of having an in person shop are rising all the time. So, when you find a gem like this, please use it regularly and encourage your friends to do so too.
Engaging with content online can also be a really good way to support what shops like The Exchange are trying to do. This is important because a good number of sales come from people seeing items that they like online. However, the algorithms used by social media companies are heavily reliant on people interacting with posts, so even just posting a comment saying “I love this! 😍” when you see something you like can greatly increase the chances of the content being shared more widely and reaching a new audience of would-be buyers.
In addition to supporting a unique local business, you’ll also be supporting an important conceptual shift in the way that we shop for clothes. The idea of a dress agency that sells on your behalf will be new to many people and misconceptions can arise as a result: “Is it a charity shop?” “If it sells designer labels it’s bound to be really expensive!” Etc. Etc. All of these can put people off trying something that could otherwise work really well for them, so the more that these alternative forms of retail are showcased, shared and used, the more people will start to understand what they are and why they make sense, both in terms of fashion, the local economy and the environment.
The Exchange is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am-5pm
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