Our followers know we like to help out charities and we are proud to have helped our Manchester Arndale client to stage their second (and also award winning) fashion event for homeless charity Mustard Tree.  Our good friends Clarke Gough donated all of the fixtures and fittings and this innovative fashion event showcased its ’empty shelves’ to the public last weekend.

The Empty Shop, Manchester Arndale

The unique project invites members of the public, retailers and Manchester businesses to donate items of pre-loved clothing, which are styled up each day by stylists and fashion bloggers and emptied each night to be donated to local homeless charity, Mustard Tree. The stunning shop design, built by Clarke Gough is being re-used to host the event.” Quote from the Manchester Arndale blog. Read more here.

Bloggers, Stylists and fashionista’s will be helping to transform the shop with fashion looks created from the donations. Every evening the store is emptied and the clothes collected for the charity. Then the next day, it starts all over again.

Visualising the Empty Shop

Manchester Arndale asked if we would help develop their Empty Shop concept. The fixture items already existed from last year and our job was to update the units and re-work the layout for this year’s event which openend on 23rd January.

We produced all of the 3D drawings and visualised the shop to show how it would look within Manchester Arndale.  We then dimensioned all of the fixtures so Clarke Gough could amend the units.

Included in the layout were the feedback boxes we designed in 2013. See our previous blog here.

We also managed to get one of our suppliers, www.cut-tec.co.uk from Barnsley, to quickly manufacture the quirky press invites; hangers with the word ‘Empty Shop’ fret-cut into them.  Here’s the artwork of what they looked like:

The charity Mustard Tree will be distributing the clothes collected across the city.  They will also be selling pieces in their own stores to raise money to help fund programmes for the homelessness in Manchester.  Last year Manchester Arndale’s Empty Shop took in 2 tonnes of clothes which filled 242 bin bags.  Let’s hope this year’s event doubles this.

Why not visit the Empty Shop this weekend.  The event runs until Sunday 1st February 2015. We are popping down with a bag or two and hope to see you there!