Ready Steady Store go above and beyond to help our friends

Ready Steady Store is one of Barnabus’ longest running corporate supporters; they started to support our work back in 2010 when we reached out to them about providing storage for our donations and other possible support. They gave us storage and got behind our very first ever fun run at Heaton Park with a stall giving water to the runners. This then led to Ready Steady Store supporting many sponsored runs including the Great Manchester Run.

They also supported us in the launch of a huge Manchester clothing drive and for more than 10 years they’ve supported us with our storage needs.

Read the full story here

The winters of 2009 and 2010 were extremely severe with some of the coldest weather the UK had seen in 100 years. This cold and wet weather caused us to run out of warm, waterproof clothes for people sleeping rough in these harsh conditions. We were considering launching a clothing drive and realised that if Manchester responded, we wouldn’t have enough room to store the clothes.

Ready Steady Store generously stepped in and allowed us to use the huge roof space that used to exist above their Manchester Central store. More than that they agreed that they would be a drop off point for donations, this was an incredible support as we didn’t have the spare manpower or resources to manage this; it really was wonderful.

Together we launched a clothing drive, we had some fantastic support, an agency did a pro bono campaign for us which included a short film. We were on BBC radio Manchester and a 30 second advert played on the massive Piccadilly Garden Screen every 4 minutes telling people where they could drop off items!

The people of Manchester answered

In true Manchester style the people answered the call for help and we were inundated with clothing. It took some time for us to sort through the mountain of clothes but Ready Steady Store were there to support us and their staff did an amazing job collecting in the donations ready for us to go through.

The overwhelming support of the people of Manchester and the space at Ready Steady Store meant that we had a stock of clothing for many, many months. We were also able to bless other charities with donations we received but couldn’t use for example children’s clothing which we donated to other charities.

Our relationship grows

As Ready Steady Store grew as a business they converted the roof space into more storage units, but we were able to move our items into storage units which we received at a discount rate and have continued to use ever since. This is very important to us as we have very limited storage space on our premises and the money we save can be spent on our frontline services.

Ready Steady Store is an excellent company we have a fantastic relationship with them and we are proud and blessed to see this continue.

We have just started to take in second hand clothing donations again at Barnabus having paused this during the pandemic if you would like to know how you can support our work please check our list of needed donations.

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