Haru - Help and Re-use with Age NI

Age NI partners with new pre-loved online retailer

Northern Ireland’s leading charity for older people, Age NI, has teamed up with an exciting new online marketplace for second-hand premium brand clothing and accessories.

Local e-commerce start-up Haru (Help and Re-Use) is a new way for charities to offer their quality pre-loved clothing to a wider range of consumers by selling them online across various marketplaces including haru.co.uk.

The founders of Haru spotted the opportunity to sell premium pre-loved goods donated to charity shops online and thereby ensure the charities get the best price possible.

Explaining how it works, Sam Lynas, Co-Founder of Haru said, “Haru was designed to make online selling easy and accessible for charity shops and sustainable brands. Haru guides retailers on what items to sell online and collects their stock, which is then processed and sold, with money going back to the original organisation.

“Our goal is to see charity shops increase their fundraising by expanding their pre-loved marketplace, through enabling them to sell online. Never has Age NI’s work been so important and we want to play a small part in supporting the work they do, while empowering people to do the same through their purchases.”

Sinead McGrath of Age NI said, “This is fulfilling such an important gap in the charity shop space. Haru aims to get charities a higher price for premium items than they might achieve on the shop floor. This in turn should encourage people to donate their more precious pre-loved clothing and accessories. Many people who donate to charity shops like ours fear that their higher end or branded items won’t achieve their real market value. Quite often, these items either sell for a bargain price or, more often, people just don’t donate them for resale and hang on to items they no longer use.

“This is a simple but brilliantly executed idea: the Haru marketplace looks great, it’s easy to navigate and there is an ever-changing store stocked with fabulous branded items. There will be lots of very happy shoppers once they discover Haru!”

Haru’s founders are also driven by the desire to tackle fast-fashion by reducing the amount of clothing going to landfill and aiming to make fashion more sustainable.

Sam Lynas of Haru said, “With the fast fashion industry identified as one of the major contributors to waste and carbon emissions, more than ever people want a sustainable choice when it comes to clothing and accessories. Consumers are increasingly recognising that second-hand fashion is a sustainable, affordable and purposeful choice. It’s no longer a stigma to wear second-hand, today people rightly wear it with pride.”

Visit Haru online at www.haru.co.uk or shop Age NI’s collection at www.haru.co.uk/ageni. If you have branded or sought-after premium items to donate to Age NI and sold via Haru, these can be dropped off at any of Age NI’s shops in Bangor, Newtownards, Ballymena and Coleraine.