Giving Back & Responsibility
Because business should leave things better than it found them. Don't you agree?
The corner of the studio nobody photographs
Every independent maker has one. Samples that never went into production. Seconds with a flaw only the maker can see. End of line, wrong colourway, the run that was ten too many.
Most of it eventually goes in a bin, not because anyone wants that, but because arranging anything else is one more job on a list that is already too long.
So we made it part of being on Brix + Bailey.
What we ask of every brand
When a brand joins the marketplace, we ask them to commit to finding a home for their surplus rather than a skip. Not a target, not a report to file. Simply a route, set up once, that means the samples go somewhere useful.
For our UK brands, we point them at Sutton Night Watch and help make the introduction.
For brands elsewhere, a charity local to them is almost always the better answer. Shipping seconds from Kolkata to Surrey helps nobody. We will help find one if that is useful, and we would rather they chose somewhere they actually care about.
It applies to brands joining now and to brands already with us. Nobody is being asked to do anything difficult. They are being asked to decide once.
Sutton Night Watch
Sutton Night Watch supports people affected by homelessness across the London Borough of Sutton and beyond, providing food, showers, clothing and a permanent base where people are actually seen and heard.
We have donated our own samples, returns and dead stock to them for years. Good stock should go to people who need it rather than to landfill, and there is nothing more complicated to it than that.
Registered charity 1171903. Other ways to give.
Smart Works
Smart Works helps unemployed women into work through interview coaching and professional clothing, across ten centres in the UK.
The practical half is the clothes. The half that changes things is the coaching, and the confidence that comes with walking into a room properly dressed and properly prepared. 68% of the women who visit go on to get the job.
Registered charity 1080609. Donate work-appropriate clothing.
We also give things away locally
Items for auctions, raffles and local fundraising, where we can. Small, unglamorous, and it costs a charity nothing to ask.
Got something you no longer need?
Any brand, any condition. If you have a bag or a piece of clothing sitting unworn, we will help you give it a second life rather than a bin bag.
Get in touch, or go straight to either charity. Both would far rather hear from you directly than not at all.
Brands that build it in
A number of our makers give a share of what they make to causes they care about, as a matter of course rather than as a campaign.
What we are not claiming
We do not measure how much this diverts, and we are not going to invent a number. We know the route exists, we know brands use it, and that is the honest extent of it.
When we have something worth counting, we will publish it.
More on how we work
Our code of ethics, how we choose brands, and our resources page.