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You and Yours: Gap Finders: Wayne Hemingway

Gap Finders: Wayne Hemingway

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Gap Finders: Wayne Hemingway

After global success in fashion and design, he’s now restyling charity shops. Find out why

Having run hugely successful fashion and design firms we find out how Wayne spotted unique gaps in these markets and how his latest venture helps charity shops do the same.

The UK has more than 10,000 charity shops.  For some, the thrill of rummaging for unexpected bargains is infinitely more rewarding than predictable curated  displays of the bland new clothes anywhere else. Others like the fact that as well as supporting causes, they recirculate 390,000 tonnes of textiles that would otherwise be burnt or dumped.  

But such warmth towards charity retail isn’t universal.  They're often on quiet streets and perceived as a symptom of a town’s terminal decline.  Meanwhile, the growth in the numbers of us shopping in retail parks and on ultra-fast fashion apps shows no signs of stopping. 

Designer, Wayne Hemingway thinks it doesn’t have to be like this. Using money he made selling unwanted wool coats in Camden market, he first found fame and fortune setting up the iconic British fashion label Red or Dead. This clothed the likes of Kylie Minogue while many less famous people in the 80s queued outside its shops on multiple continents. 

In the late 90s he set up a design agency that’s since won awards in the fiercely competitive worlds of architecture and branding.  With a CV like that, most people in his position would be tempted to cash in their lot and retire in the sun.  Not Wayne. He saw an opportunity in charity retail and in 2023 he set up Charity Super.Mkt.  It offers hand picked collections of second hand fashion in famous high streets and ensures more money goes to the charities who provide the goods.  

Its stores have raised over a £1.5million for charities and appeared in prime locations spanning London’s Bond Street  to Glasgow’s Buchanan Street. We find out how it works, what he learnt from the highs and lows of his previous businesses and what he'll do next. 

Presenter: Winifred Robinson
Producer: Julian Paszkiewicz

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