Swap shop for women's clothes My Shared Wardrobe launches in Barrow

Anna Cargan, 35, from Barrow has launched ‘My Shared Wardrobe’ after the success of her current co-run online second-hand kids clothes shop Buildabundle.

The concept of the business means people can bring in their good condition and clean women’s clothes, shoes and accessories into the swap shop and they will receive swap tokens allowing them to exchange them for the same amount of items.

Anna said she got the idea from many women having too many items in their wardrobe that no longer fit or don’t suit and they just go to waste but instead want to bring a new lease of life to them with a swap.

She said: “This is a service that will allow us to bring items in and swap them for something we will hopefully get more use out of.

“I decided to set it up because I’ve successfully run Buildabundle.co.uk  for several years alongside my business partner Nathalie - and we get asked all the time by customers if we’d consider doing women’s clothes too. However, Buildabundle is really busy and sells items nationally across the UK, and we don’t have the capacity to add womenswear into the model we are currently doing there. But having been asked so often, I have decided to see whether it could work on a small local capacity as a swapping system.

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Anna also hopes this new business will help create less of a demand for fast fashion.

She said: “Fast fashion has its place for buying the odd thing. Unfortunately, the fashion industry causes a huge amount of pollution (more than shipping and aviation combined), and with the world being in a climate emergency, its just not something that can be sustained.

“If we can make it easier for people to use what’s already been produced, I hope more people will do it, and we might just have our own tiny impact on the industry!

Anna is hoping to start collecting items in exchange for swap tokens from the first week of June with the shop opening for swapping to begin in July.

It will be based on Shore Street, Barrow, and people can contact the My Shared Wardrobe Facebook page to book swaps. Initially the shop will only be open for appointments on a Sunday afternoon however, this may increase if there is enough demand.

Anna said: “How well it works will depend entirely on how many people use it – the more support there is, the better it will work for everyone because there will be lots of choice of items. We’ve been overwhelmed with positive messages so far, and hope that it will be something fun that people can enjoy using.”