Recycled clothing market expands

A USED and pre-loved clothing market established early last year has relocated to a larger space.

Having previously been run out of St James’ Parish School Hall in Sebastopol, the organisers behind the Reworn Ballarat market have packed down their racks and moved to a larger space at St Patrick’s Hall, Ballarat Central.

Previously restricted to about 18 stalls, Reworn co-founder Jacqui Jarvis said the new location has given them a greater capacity to achieve their goal of saving clothing from landfill.

“We’ve been able to pretty much double our spaces,” she said. “We’ve gone from about 18 to 35, 40. It’s meant we can get a lot more of the clothes recirculating.

“At St James’ we just seemed to be selling out at markets all the time so we’d have huge waitlists and it was either we’d need to do an extra market or get a new larger space.

“We’ll be centralised now with foot traffic coming through. The school was always a bit of a tester to see if this is something Ballarat would be interested in and the response was overwhelming.”

Having tested their setup at unfamiliar sites with popups at the Ballarat Mining Exchange and the Western Hotel, Reworn co-founder Rochelle Tournier-Jarvis said their new location shows how much their market has been accepted.

“I think everyone’s just so conscious about shopping for sustainability. It’s become a bit of a fashion, that people shop second-hand,” she said.

“It’s definitely a big growing industry. This has become a bit of a social and community thing too. We have our regular stallholders that just love chatting with everyone.”

After having held their first market at St Patrick’s Hall in March, their next event will mark another first with the launch of a new collaboration with Annecto’s Front Door Recycling initiative.

FDR collectors, who are generally disabled or seeking employment, will take any unsold clothing from the market which to be donated to non-profit organisations.

Loran Cressey, FDR’s operations manager for programs of support in the Western Grampians region said partnerships with groups like Reworn are integral to what they do.

“It means our participants who collect the bags are able to get the skills to be job-ready. It also means we’re saving clothes from landfill,” she said.

“We’ll offer all the stallholders a bag where at the end they can put any clothing in there for us to sort at our warehouse and they’ll be ready for any groups that need them.

“From about December to January we’ve collected over 100 bags’ worth. We have partnerships with St Vincent’s and the Salvation Army and other markets.”

The next Reworn Ballarat market is set for Saturday, 27 May from 1pm to 4pm.