Arcadia Merchandise Ltd recently embarked on a new journey in our bid to be a more sustainable business. One challenge for which we wanted to find a solution, was how to ensure items of merchandise that were not needed ended up finding use and not landfill. With the help of the wonderful non-for-profit charity A Good Thing, Arcadia have now been able to solve this problem. In February we were told that over 5,000 items of high-quality branded products were no longer required by one of our clients. Arcadia Director Simon Dalton made it his mission to ensure that these items found a home and did not go to waste. Enter A Good Thing. 

Launched in 2021, A Good Thing work to make it easy for businesses to donate unwanted items to local charities. Working closely with founder Cathy, Arcadia were eventually partnered with Crisis UK. The merchandise we donated included adult clothing such as caps, warm puffer jackets, T-shirts, Patagonia fleeces and Nike polo shirts and even baby grows. It also included items of drinkware such as tumblers, mugs and drinking bottles, as well as practical items like laptop stands, Moleskine notebooks, stylus pens and backpacks. This vast amount of incredibly useful items, over 1,200kg in weight, were organised to be collected from Arcadia’s London warehouse by Crisis Warehouse and Facilities Manager Richard Davies. He would then ensure these products were distributed to Crisis centres where they would be utilised by those in need. Richard said, “These sorts of donations always go to the people experiencing homelessness. The individuals whom we help. No middleman is used, we hand items directly to those said individuals.”

We’re Committed to Better Sustainability

We were overjoyed with this outcome, viewing Crisis as the perfect destination for this donation. Sustainability is a core value for us at Arcadia and donating through A Good Thing aligned seamlessly with our commitment to reducing waste and finding new purposes for unused items.

As an industry, the merchandise sector has in the past been wasteful, with unused items ending up in in bins and landfill. This is now changing, and companies are taking more responsibility. Donating via A Good Thing was a brilliant way for Arcadia to achieve better accountability for the lifecycle of products without any added labour or stress for our company. It’s a charity we will continue to be affiliated with moving forward and we really hope to see lots of other merchandise suppliers and distributors do the same.

We were not the only ones who were extremely satisfied with the service A Good Thing provided. The Crisis Team were equally elated, ‘Thank you to your team and to the amazing people who use your service. We cannot thank you enough for this donation and the hard work that has taken place for it to happen.”

Jason Markwick

Having worked in Promotional Merchandise for the last 30 years I have been exposed to all aspects of the industry. Starting out as an account manager working with some of the worlds leading brands, I have learnt to understand the needs of a client, manufacturing processes, and what it takes to deliver a successful promotional campaign that is on brand, on time and within a given budget.