On Saturday, 14th of May, we held our first local event at the Hemel Hempstead Leisure Centre. The Dopplle Team gathered together to put on a swap shop that no one would forget!

This event was a special event, mainly because it was our first local swap shop and the fact we were opening the users to everyone rather than just University Students. With over 500 items to choose from, the residents of Hemel gathered together to swap their pre-loved clothes for something different using the Dopplle app.

We had promoted the event over several different areas, we had publisherd articles on the front cover of the Boxmoor Direct magazine, an interview with MyNews Magazine and Radio Dacorum. Along with all of those, we had been promoting it within the Leisure Centre and on the lead up to the event.

We had also teamed up with 1impossiblething that distribute pre-loved sports footware to families in the local area that are less fortunate and need a little help. It had the ingredients to be a great event!

We started the morning bright and early at the Leisure Centre to setup the room with all of the clothing rails, hang all of the clothes, sort them in to categories, get all the tables ready, changing rooms and posters put on the walls.

We had 2 sessions, a morning drop off, followed by the actual swap event 30 mins after.

There wasv quite a few early customers for the first drop off which got the team sorting the new clothes brought in. After the first drop off had finished, we cleared the clothes and re-arranged the tables ready for the main swap event –  9.30 came and everyone rushed over to look through all of the new clothes they could choose from. It was really nice to see the smiles from people as they went from rail to rail. The afternoon session was equally as busy, desipite it being an amazingly hot and sunny day outside.

In total nearly 240 swaps took place during the event, with customers bringing up to 10 items each and taking away one item of clothing for each one they had brought. There were many success stories from the event with people finding The One (or The Many !) item that they really wanted to take home and wear.

We really look forward to our next local event, keep an eye on our socials!