Case Study: The Wardrobe Exchange
Location: Ripon, North Yorkshire
Project: Event concept, collaboration, community engagement and delivery
Sometimes the best business ideas don’t start with a lengthy strategy document.
They start with two people having a conversation and saying, “Wouldn’t it be brilliant if…”
That’s essentially how The Wardrobe Exchange began.
It started with two female founders and one idea…
Rebecca, founder of independent Ripon shop The GreenHouse, and I had been talking about ways to create something a little different for our local community.
We’re both female founders running businesses in Ripon and, like many women building businesses in smaller towns and rural areas, we know the value of collaboration.
There isn’t the same huge pool of customers, venues, business networks and opportunities you might find in a city. That means finding ways to work together, share audiences and create genuinely interesting reasons for people to come into town can make a real difference.
We also both liked the idea of encouraging people to rethink the clothes already sitting in wardrobes around North Yorkshire. And so The Wardrobe Exchange was born.
But we didn't want to create just another clothes swap…
The idea was simple: people could bring along good-quality clothes they no longer wore and exchange them for something new-to-them.
But we wanted the experience to feel more considered than turning up with a bag of clothes and rummaging through a pile on a table.
So we created a proper event around it.
We developed a tiered credit system based on the type and value of the clothes being donated, organised early access for people who donated in advance and thought carefully about everything from rails and fitting areas to mirrors, changing space and how people would move through the event.
The aim was to make it feel sociable, enjoyable and just a little bit special.
Then we brought other local organisations into it…
Collaboration became a really important part of the event.
The Ripon Inn provided its tipi as the venue, giving attendees somewhere interesting and lovely to spend the evening while also introducing more local people to a fantastic event space.
Saint Michael’s Hospice supported us with volunteers, and any suitable clothing remaining at the end of the exchange was donated to the charity.
The GreenHouse acted as the ticket office and an advance drop-off point for clothing, making it easier for people to take part while also bringing people into one of Ripon’s independent shops.
Rather than each organisation trying to achieve something separately, we created an event where everyone could contribute something and benefit from it.
Creating events in a rural community is slightly different…
One of the things I love about working in and around Ripon is the strength of the relationships between local businesses and the community.
But rural businesses also face challenges that aren’t always as pronounced in larger towns and cities.
Audiences are more geographically spread out. Public transport can be limited. Footfall isn’t guaranteed. And there simply aren’t thousands of potential customers living within a couple of miles of every event or business. It means giving people a genuine reason to make the journey matters.
The Wardrobe Exchange combined shopping, sustainability, socialising and supporting local businesses into one evening, creating something that wasn’t readily available locally and giving women from Ripon and the surrounding area another reason to come together.
And then we tested whether people actually wanted it…
Because this was the first Wardrobe Exchange, we treated it as exactly that: a first event.
Rather than trying to make it enormous straight away, we used it to test the idea, understand how people behaved on the night and learn what we would change next time.
Around 25 people attended the first event and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. People embraced the credit system, enjoyed browsing and trying things on and, importantly, there was a genuine feeling of excitement around the concept.
We also came away with practical learning, including just how much space a room full of clothes actually takes up and how important fitting areas are when everyone suddenly discovers something they want to try on.
Exactly the kind of things you only really discover by doing it.
The result was bigger than one evening
The Wardrobe Exchange demonstrated that there was an appetite locally for something a little different.
It created another opportunity for women in and around Ripon to meet, introduced people to local independent businesses and venues and gave good-quality clothing a second life.
It also showed what can happen when female founders collaborate rather than trying to build everything alone. Rebecca and I brought different skills, audiences and ideas to the project. Local businesses and organisations added their own. Together, we were able to create something that none of us would necessarily have produced in quite the same way individually.
And, perhaps most importantly, the first Wardrobe Exchange gave us something incredibly useful: Proof that the idea worked.
What this project demonstrates
The Wardrobe Exchange is a good example of the kind of work I particularly enjoy, spotting an opportunity, turning a loose idea into something tangible and bringing the right people together to make it happen.
It combined event development, project management, partnership working, customer experience, community engagement and on-the-ground problem solving.
And it did all of that in the context of a small rural city where collaboration between businesses isn’t simply a nice idea – it can be an incredibly effective way of creating opportunities, attracting people into the area and making brilliant things happen.
