Your questions answered about furniture donations

 Genesis Furniture has grown and it’s thanks to you, our community, for your quality furniture donations.  

I spoke with Joe Wade, the General Manager for Genesis Furniture, and put some of the questions to him that we frequently get asked.  

 What items are your best sellers? 

 Sixty percent of our sales are sofas. Other good sellers are dining tables and chairs, wardrobes, armchairs, beds and chest of drawers. 

 

Do you still provide essential furniture for homeless people who have been newly housed? 

Yes we do. Between April 23 – March 24 we provided 63 local individuals or families with furniture for their homes.  

Local agencies like BANES Welfare Support, Curo, Connect Families and Julian House contact us with a person’s furniture needs and we provide and deliver their furniture.  

One of Genesis Trust’s values is, ‘we act with compassion, integrity and kindness’. When we give furniture to people supported by other support agencies, whatever their situation, we provide nice furniture for people to start a fresh. These are often items like beds, sofas, tables, chairs and bedside tables. 

You can read more about our vision and values HERE. 

Will you ever open a physical shop again? 

Probably not and there’s good reasons. When COVID struck we had to close the physical shop. This gave us time to review our business model and it was decided to re-open as an online shop. 

We now use eBay. This has enlarged our market and now we are selling and delivering country-wide. And the new model is working! Sales have grown 650% over the last few years. In fact, London is our biggest market and makes up 25% of our sales. 

Because we have a larger market and are not limited to the small space of a physical shop, we are able to collect certain furniture donations which other charities won’t take. For example, some dark wooden furniture and good quality vintage looking furniture are selling really well for us on eBay. Ultimately, that’s less furniture going to the tip! 

How come you don’t take certain items? 

Our main mission is to sell quality furniture to raise funds for the charitable work of Genesis Trust. That means whatever we collect we must be able to sell. If not, then we have to take it to the tip and we are charged a fee to do that. That is not a sustainable way of doing business.  

So we can’t take the following: 

  • Any upholstered furniture without fire labels. It would be illegal for us to sell on any upholstered furniture items without a fire safety label. 
  • Items which smell of cigarette smoke. Nobody will buy it and so we would have to take it to the tip.  
  • Items which are too worn, stained or damaged. We won’t be able to sell these and will need to be taken to the tip, an added expense. That takes away funds which could go toward Genesis Trust’s work with homeless and vulnerable people. It also takes staff time away from collecting and delivering.  

This may sound a bit blunt, but we are not set up as a house clearance company which collects any and all household furniture. Those companies make their money by charging people to take furniture away. The only way we can provide a free collection service is if we can sell the furniture we collect. That’s a win win scenario for both of us! You get your unwanted furniture removed for free and we sell it on to raise funds for the charity. 

Thank you for your support! 

The Furniture team really appreciates the generosity of our community. We completely rely on quality furniture donations from you. From April 2023 until March 2024, 1014 local people have donated quality furniture to us. Thank you very much! If you’d like to read more about donating furniture you can read more HERE.  

We hope the answers to these questions help you more understand what Genesis Furniture is about. If you have any other questions, please email Ed who does the marketing for Genesis Furniture at Edward.major@genesistrust.org.uk.  

Other Furniture Team Members