I recently visited Dinard in France, but close by there was a place called Dinan, which was the biggest town, and that had a massive Emmaus shop. My first impression was that it looked like absolute chaos because the shop was huge and there was stuff everywhere. There was stuff out in the car park, on tables, out in the open air, but actually, when we got in and understood the system, it was really well organised.
The system was that each area had its own person who sat within that area and was responsible for putting stuff out and dealing with customers. For example, the kid’s area had a lady sat there at a desk and basically, if you picked something up in that area, you had to take it to her. She then gave you a slip of paper and wrote the price on, you walked around with the slip of paper, not the item, and then you went to the cash desk, paid for everything and then retraced your steps picking all your items up. I can understand this system because it’s such a big place and there is no way they could keep track of people.
Bringing ideas home
Visiting this Emmaus shop in France was quite interesting because when we put stuff out in the Emporium charity shop here at Emmaus South Manchester, we don’t always know how best to display them. So, it was quite nice to see how they displayed everything within the different areas of their shop.
One of the things was the blankets because they have a sort of receiving area, which was a massive great big shed where all the donations come in and get sorted. They actually had racks where they were keeping all of the winter stuff because it’s obviously hot for quite a period of time in France.
I introduced myself to one of the people there and they explained that they stockpile for the winter and then all that stuff goes out at this time of year. So, that’s one thing we’ve just done, put all of our blankets out which we’ve saved up over the summer months.
My holiday in France was great and I had a great time visiting the Emmaus shop. I was there nearly all day, me and my sister, rooting through things and seeing what we could find.