Our Colliergate shop undergoes an exciting refurbishment

Our Colliergate shop is the first of our city centre charity shops to get a brand-new look. The popular store, which has been part of the York high street for five years, is undergoing a full refurbishment and will soon feature contemporary fixtures and fittings, digital screens, and a fresh, modern feel.

Speaking about the refurbishment, Jason Lomas, Head of Retail at St Leonard’s, says: “We’re grateful to the community, who have always supported us through our 14 shops in North Yorkshire. Through their shop donations and purchases to our Colliergate shop alone, they raise a staggering £100,000 each year to fund our vital Hospice services. With this newly renovated shop we hope to increase this amount each year and we’re urging local people to dig out their quality pre-loved clothes, shoes, bags and books and bring them in.”

More than 15 volunteers will work alongside 3 staff members in the revamped Colliergate shop. By selling pre-loved items in all our stores and online, we offset 99,268kg of CO2 emissions and prevent 7,364kg of items from going to landfill on a weekly basis.

The Colliergate store makeover is part of our wider vision to modernise our retail offering, moving away from the traditional charity shop style. The shop will stock quality pre-loved fashion, homewares and books, all presented in a fresh, modern environment.

And that’s not all, there will be a dedicated denim department, as part of our Hospice’s drive to be more sustainable.

Jason added: “Thousands of litres of water are used in the manufacture of denim each year so why not help the environment by buying pre-loved items instead of new? We will be focusing one of the areas of the store on denim fashion, which we know is popular with our customers.”

Our Colliergate shop will officially reopen on Friday 13 June at 10am and will then open Monday to Saturday, 9am to 4pm.

Jason said: “In a similar style as our newly-opened Malton and Selby shops, this new-look Colliergate store promises to offer people a great shopping experience so that they can enjoy coming into the shop just like any other high street store. We wanted to move away from the typical charity-shop feel and create something new, whilst keeping the costs down for the customer. We really hope our shoppers will love what we’ve done.

“We need to raise around £6 million annually to run the Hospice’s services for our community. We now have 14 charity shops in North Yorkshire which helps us raise these much-needed funds, with one in ten of our patients being cared for thanks to the funds raised through our shops.”