14th November Exeter Swap Shop
Dopplle’s first Exeter Clothes Swap with Altr.d and Fashion Society.
After looking at many potential venues in Exeter to hold a Clothes Swap, we narrowed it down to either the Phoenix or the Lemon Grove, but neither were quite right. At one point we decided the Forum would be best but instead we managed to secure the foyer of the Innovation Centre. This building is the hub of anything and everything related to start-ups, entrepreneurship and business growing, so it was the perfect place for us. On the same day as our Clothes Swap event, there was an MBA Design Challenge taking place too! BAM (a sustainable bamboo clothing company) were there trying to find environmentally friendly solutions to some of the problems they were facing as a company. This meant there were lots of likeminded people there who we could talk to about start-up companies and entrepreneurship!
Altr.d were ready for the day bright and early, camping out in the Innovation Center’s café from 9am to assess the space, and more importantly, the quality of the coffee. Fashion Society and Dopplle arrived later on, ready to start setting up. Everything was easy apart from putting the clothes rails together. Between all of us we had an extremely high IQ ,and yet for some reason joining some metal poles together stumped us. Next up was putting the clothes on hangers and as we already had 100 items, it required a lot of man power.
11:30am appeared and the rush also started. Whilst many customers had dropped their items off at our drop off points in the week running up to the event, many decided to bring clothes on the day (which was great) but that meant we were all running back and forth like headless chickens trying to get everything on hangers and on to the right part of the rails. Once it hit lunchtime, we were extremely quiet, causing one Altr.d member to try and arrange the items of clothes in order of colour to create that Instagram worthy aesthetic we all strive to achieve.
3pm rolled around and we were left with under half of what was bought to the clothes swap shop, so it was a big success!! Yet again packing up the rails proved to be a complex task but we did it, and sorted the remaining clothes into several piles ready for the next Clothes Swap! Some items were also put towards the Enactus Altr.d project.
Thank you so much to everyone that came and supported us on the day and thank you to the Innovation Centre for letting us hold such an exciting event in their space. Watch out Bath and Bristol Universities… we will be running a clothes swap event for you guys soon!