In the last month, Aberdeen City Council has extended its use of the Reuse Consortium to offer customers the choice of reuse furniture through their Furniture Leasing Scheme. Over the last four years, Aberdeen City Council has used its Tenancy Support Fund to provide essential items to tenants to help them set up or stay in a tenancy. Being able to access quality reuse items has been very important to be able to offer choice and to stretch the budget further, and we are delighted this is now being extended to the Leasing Scheme.
Instant Neighbour are our Consortium member based in Aberdeen and have done an amazing job of supplying the Council with furniture over the last four years. They also work with the Council to provide a furniture storage service. But this charity does so much more and has been extremely busy throughout the pandemic with their foodbank and other charitable activities.
Like many other reuse charities, Instant Neighbour have focussed on how they can provide services online and have recently launched their fabulous online shop. With funding from the Adapt and Thrive fund, Instant Neighbour will soon be recruiting two new posts for the online shop. The online shop is fully Revolve certified, along with the other three Home Comforts shops. As if that wasn’t enough, Instant Neighbour have also opened a new city centre shop in Union Square, and gone through a full rebranding exercise!
Susan Cheyne, Business Development Manager at Instant Neighbour, has 25 years experience in retail, including the John Lewis Partnership. She said “Although we have all had the most horrific year, we’ve come out of it busier than ever. The online shop has been a massive learning experience for me personally, but I have hugely enjoyed it. Thanks go to the Revolve team at ZWS for getting us certified so quickly, and to all the team at Instant Neighbour who have worked tirelessly throughout lockdown. We are all buzzing about being back!”