A husband and wife team, faced with the expense of kitting out their kids during the recession, has launched a new business to help parents across the UK recycle their unused children’s clothes.Eyal and Abbe Opher, who are based in Tintern in the Wye Valley, have two young children and were fed up with throwing away perfectly good clothes every time they were out grown.
After months spent throwing ideas around, part-time copywriter Abbe and full-time vet Eyal, came up with a website that allows parents to list bundles of their unused children’s clothes which can be purchased by other parents according to age and gender.
When they had settled on their idea, they approached the Centre for Business, which runs the Welsh Government’s Business Start Up Service. They were paired with an experienced advisor who was able to give them practical help and guidance in creating a business plan and taking it forward.
Abbe Opher explains: “Buying clothes for children is so expensive and they outgrow them very quickly. This really hit home when I took my 15 month old daughter to buy shoes and the shop assistant told me to bring her back for a foot re-measure and ‘most probably a new pair of shoes’ in 4-6 weeks. I did the sums and realised that her shoe bill would overshoot mine by hundreds of pounds before her third birthday!
“I originally had the idea for an online shoe exchange and although it did raise some money for my son’s play group, the idea wasn’t viable. After much discussion with my husband, the idea of ReLIKE was born.
“ReLIKE is a service for parents wanting new clothes, and parents wanting to offload outgrown stuff with minimum hassle and maximum reward. We wanted it to appeal all parents, so created a system which is very simple to understand and quick to use, while being environmentally sustainable at the same time.”
According to the recycling campaign organisation WRAP, the average household contains around £4000 worth of clothes, almost a third of which haven’t been worn for at least a year. It also found that an average of £140,000 million worth of clothes goes into landfill each year.
Each ReLIKE bundle costs just £15 which covers the clothes, packing, collection and delivery by courier. ReLIKE also donates 20p from every sale to the charities The Infant Trust and LATCH.
Ms Opher said: “We currently have around 150 users across the UK and hope to be able to grow the business over time. We are also using a lot of local companies for services such as graphic design, programming and printing on a daily basis, and we are pleased to be able to put something back into the community.
“The help we received from the Centre for Business was crucial in getting the business up and running. Our advisor was an invaluable asset and the creative and practical advice we received was right on the mark every time.”
The Centre for Business was established in 1982 has helped to create more than 10,000 new businesses, assisted 25,000 potential entrepreneurs and supported 6,000 existing businesses, with 83% of start-ups it assists still going after three years, compared to a national average of just 35%.