Who are we...

The Clothes Horse began in 2016 when founder Chantal wanted to create an easy way for families to find preloved clothes for their children which are affordable and helps the environment.  

Chantal, the founder, had been gifted clothes by friends and family since she was first pregnant with her eldest son and had always found it such a lovely and generous thing to do - a practical way of actively showing love and thinking of someone else. Recognising that her youngest son was outgrowing so many of his clothes, Chantal had the realisation that other people often didn’t have family or friend networks or the mechanism for clothes exchanges. Chantal continued to think and pray about the idea and realised that this was something she wanted to make a reality. Chantal started small in her loft at home with community donated clothes and when she met someone needing clothes she would go in the loft and get a package ready for people to collect. Soon Chantal’s loft was full and a larger premises was found.

We are based in Cornwall and are an environmental organisation that promotes a circular clothing economy - we gather stocks of specialist preloved and surplus clothing which can then be re worn.  

Our vision...

Our vision is to see positive environmental choices at the heart of family lives in Cornwall. Our mission is to reduce the environmental impact of maternity, baby, children and youth clothing by connecting and strengthening our community. 

We have built up a strong reputation throughout Cornwall mainly through word of mouth and are known for our accessibility, inclusivity and our specialist circular approach to keeping clothes in the community and out of landfill. We have built up great connections with our customers and for many we are their 'go to' for getting good quality clothes for their family whilst helping the environment.  Many of our families have been with us since the start.

What we do...

We have a unit in Newquay, Cornwall where families can come and pick and choose clothes for their children.  We have clothing from newborn to 14 years as well as maternity, shoes, uniform and coats.  Families can leave a card or cash donation for what they take and come back as often as they like.

For families that cannot get to us we offer a postal service where we can post a parcel of clothes to them.  

We encourage, educate and enable people to make positive environment choices by guiding our community to return outgrown clothes to us so that they can be appropriately reused again in the community. By swapping their clothes for ours enables our community to come back time again and get clothes that they need for each season, growth spurt and occasion all whilst reducing their environmental impact.

Why we do what we do...

We understand the importance of keeping clothes in the community and how best to do this using our services. As fast fashion is continuing to make a stand in our shops and online we want to show that there is another way, a way that is more kinder to the planet and more affordable.  

We want to save clothes from going to landfill by having quality preloved clothes available in our community.  

We also are here for our community.  We have incredible conversations with our families creating great connections.  We have great volunteers who are skilled in sorting and displaying quality clothes so that our goods challenge, inspire, educate and bring joy. We are experienced in providing aged 6 hypoallergenic, thermal purple leggings with sparkly unicorns when asked! 

We are seeing the value and importance of offering quality food surplus out to communities across Cornwall as a way to reduce food surplus and we believe that The Clothes Horse is offering something similar with clothing. We are offering the community the opportunity to get quality clothes for their families which is helping the environment by reducing clothes surplus and clothes going to landfill in an affordable and accessible way. We are actively enabling our families to experience that sustainable options may be both better for the environment and the wallet whilst challenging the stigma that can sometimes be attached to secondhand or surplus clothing.

What we want to do next...

The Clothes Horse wants to continue to spread the word of what we do in our community and across Cornwall.  We want to build on the incredible connections that we have already formed and build more connections as we feel these are really important.  Connections for us are conversations with families and individuals on being more environmentally minded through clothes.  Looking at ways that we can wear more preloved clothes, saving clothes from landfill and do so affordably.

This funding will be used to:

•  strengthen our organisation by improving customer access, widening our community networks and deepen our volunteer offerings.
• make The Clothes Horse accessible to more rural people in Cornwall who face public transport barriers through our postal service, online stylist consultations and community pop-ups.
• develop our work with our volunteers by improving our recruitment practices and develop further training opportunities.