Forest Farm Centre opening shop for Sandton thrifters

Forest Farm residential care facility for adults living with cerebral palsy or special needs, on Winnie Mandela Drive, has a soon-to-be-thriving thrift store on the property.

The care facility’s executive director, Peter Lombard, said that the decision to host a thrift store arose as an avenue to increasing the centre’s revenue stream, additionally served by the bookstore.

Read more: Local youth brings thrift shopping to the Sandton community

“We identified the need that exists within the ‘thrifter’ community, through all the donations that we receive from the community; items that are not useable for our residents,” said Lombard. “Furthermore, an opportunity presented itself to repurpose an unused building, which had the potential to yield additional revenue for Forest Farm Centre.”

The opportunity to meet thrift store co-founder, and weekday shopkeeper, Abbey Fletcher, on August 23 presented a well-put-together young woman with an open, big heart full of love for Forest Farm, and the residents. Fletcher, who has been a volunteer at the centre since 2017, decided to move on from just doing what she called ‘passive volunteer work’, opting to invest her time in doing something she felt would make a lasting difference in terms of income for the home.

“The first and foremost thing is making money for the home through running a thrift store; secondary, would be creating jobs for the residents, if there are things they can help with,” said Fletcher. “Increasing foot traffic here is actually quite a good thing. Obviously not allowing people to wander about and enter residents’ homes, that’s not on, but Forest Farm will be moving towards being a little more accessible to the public to come to the bookshop and thrift store.”

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Fletcher operates the thrift store with co-founder Tayla Shaw, who works at the store over the weekends, and manages online sales.

“We’re initiating set operating hours. We’re thinking 08:30–12:30, at the moment, until I get an additional person to do the afternoon shift in the week,” said Fletcher. “In terms of accessing the thrift store, they’ll only allow people in during store operating hours. ID’s or licenses will be scanned at the front for you to come in.”

Fletcher has been spending her weekdays meticulously getting the shop ready for the centre’s official launch of their thrifting venture, cleaning clothes, sorting items, and keeping the shop looking fresh. Fletcher concluded with an indication of how much people can expect to spend on an average thrifting spree.

“Certain things will be on consignment. It’s better if something is fully donated to us because we make 100% profit; but big items like furniture don’t come easily all the time. When we speak in thrift store prices, we’re talking about anything from R2 to R25 000 [maybe more],” Fletcher closed. “We do prefer card sales for safety reasons; we won’t decline somebody if they want to pay in cash. So, Yoco all the way.”

One person’s old can easily be another person’s new, and thrift stores are the best middlemen for the task of pairing adventurous shoppers with nifty finds. The Forest Farm thrift store officially launches on October 5, so mark your calendars for a thrifty day.

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