Second hand school uniform given current situation

[MintyCedric]

I'm responsible for our second hand uniform shop (state secondary).

We take requests as and when through the year and people can come in to buy/try on if they need to. We also have a big sale in July for our new families starting Year 7 in September.

We're just starting to discuss how best to manage this given social distancing etc. It's a tricky one as usually people like to come in a see what they're getting but not sure if this will be the case, or if people will even want to buy second hand uniform. OTOH, with people losing jobs and being furloughed we may have greater need than ever.

We are considering having an online order form, and people just come in, collect and pay for their order and take it away bagged up. This, however could be problematic if something isn't right and they need refunds.

The other option is to have the sale, but manage the numbers allowed access at a time, and hold it outside on the school field if possible.

I'd be really interested to know people's thoughts on whether or not you'd buy second hand uniform in the current circumstances and how you'd like to be able to purchase it.

TIA

The school uniform bank I’m involved in are doing an order and collect/deliver system.

They request what is needed and it’s either collected at the building main door at a specific time or it’s delivered to their doorstep

Lyra

That is my favoured approach but colleague isn't so keen.

I can see where she's coming from, but am not convinced it's workable atm.

I haven't bought any new clothing since lockdown and some time before but now I come to think about it... I cant say I would want to try stuff on that other people may have been sweating over a few minutes previously and then discarded... I wonder what the risk is and how high street clothing places will deal with this. Perhaps it's an acceptable risk?
In your case, how about surveying parents?
If it were me I would probably do it remotely only. People email with a list of items they need, I bag it up and they collect. Any items that are non standard or have slight problems would be photographed and the buyer made aware.

What does she suggest?

Anything that involves people queueing up is very unlikely to be popular with the school

Also, delivery or collection at set time slots offers more anonymity to people. That means you may catch the people who need the help, with job losses or furlough, who really don’t want the rest of the parents to know they are struggling.

Purr I have suggested we survey current and prospective parents. Whatever we do will involve a lot of work and I'd hate us to put all the time and effort in and go the wrong way.

It's a great service and very lucrative for the school but we need to get it right.

Lyra that's a really good point about anonymity for those who might be uncomfortable. There may be lots of people struggling who haven't been previously and who we can't identify through the usual channels. I will definitely raise that.

What about an order service with a seperate occasion to deal with returns and re-order appropriate sizing?

BogRoll That's not a bad idea. We rely on donated uniform so there won't be a case of ordering alternative sizing as such.

I think if we quality check everything really thoroughly, and make it very clear that parents need to check their child's sizes before ordering (biggest problem is that most don't have a clue!) so we will only issue refunds for any rogue faulty items, that would work.

I think you need to be careful surveying the parents too much. What you’ll get is a lot of replies with very detailed requirements. You need to work out what is safe and practical for your volunteers to do, and then tailor what you offer to that rather than the other way round.

You’ll probably find you are busier than ever. People are skint and people don’t want to be spending out on expensive uniform when nobody is sure that there won’t be another lockdown in the winter.

For returns you could have a clear policy that you’ll not be discussing returns or swaps for 3 weeks (for example) after your order and delivery days.
I’d then have one day where you’ll swap or refund, again using the pre-planned and timed collection or delivery method, for people if that’s your usual policy. Or a no returns policy, you just have to be careful how that balances with affordability and the limited chances to try stuff on.

Does the school have multiple uniform suppliers or does your stuff generally have standard sizes?
One thing we do with the uniform bank, which can be a bit time consuming, is properly measure and give the measurements of each jumper (jumpers are always the thing folks can’t guess sizes for) so that people know that size 4 or XS is x inches long or Y inches wide.

For schools (we cover a few primaries and 2 high schools) that have multiple suppliers we ask parents where possible to give us their kids chest size as well as age/size they think. We’ve found that means we can make a better fist of giving a jumper that will fit because we know that X size chest is Size 2 with supplier A, Small with supplier B and medium with supplier C.
It’s more time consuming getting stuff out, but we see much, much less coming back.

Our uniform is very specific. We have two local suppliers - both offer online ordering, one is currently completely closed for business.

Our uniform measurement are largely in inches/cm, and we have listings of all size available by both measurement and generic size where applicable, which I would include on any online order form.

I think that asking parents to provide chest/waist/hip measurements would be really useful as some of our stock has had the size labels cut out.

You are absolutely right about the problem of surveying parents! We also would need to set up a payment system as we currently only take cash or cheque for second hand uniform sales

The only way to survey parents, IMO, is to decide what works for you and then if there are two, three at the very most, options that work then survey parents with those options.

Otherwise you get people moaning that they said they could only do every 15th Wednesday between 3.37 and 4.42 so what was the point in asking if you didn’t care what they said.

For payment you could do what some local takeaways are doing and ask for parents to put the right cash into a ziplock freezer bag with a note of their name, address and the amount of cash. Same with a cheque. I would have stickers ready on collection with name, address or child’s class and amount on them to pop on the bag as well (just to limit any CF’ery) or at least have a marker pen to number the bag for identification. Then all the cash bags can be popped in a bag or tin to be sorted later.

Great ideas!