Smarter Uniforms: School Uniforms that don’t cost the earth

School uniforms come at a price, and with The Children’s Society’s UK-wide research showing that on average households spend £287 a year on primary school uniforms and £422 a year on secondary uniforms, for many families the financial pressure is huge, when already living on a tight budget.

Established in 2017, and born from a passion for sustainability, Smarter Uniforms initially came about from wanting to ensure that people weren’t wasteful when buying school uniforms, offering high quality uniform items at a low-price, to keep them in circulation.

Smarter Uniforms, along with Gladrags and Leftover Threads are a part of the Textile Reuse Hub at East Brighton Trust and form part of their new, exciting, Social Investment Programme.

Since the cost of living crisis has become more of a motivation, Smarter Uniforms has moved towards hosting pop-up events and running stalls at community events where families can benefit from free school uniforms, saving households money, as well as saving the planet’s resources. This year alone, Smarter Uniforms has given away over 1200 items of school uniform across Brighton and Hove.

Wednesday 28th August saw the free school uniforms pop-up event at Whitehawk Library where Anna and James from Smarter Uniforms were giving away preloved school uniforms. The event was a huge success, with over 65 uniform items being given away throughout the day, supporting 20 families. If these items had been bought new, they would have cost nearly £900.

Anna told East Brighton Trust how Smarter Uniforms wanted to make it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to access low cost uniforms.

Last year, Smarter Uniforms developed their Online marketplace where you can buy and sell preloved and new uniforms, which Anna describes as ‘a bit like Vinted but for school uniforms and for Brighton and Hove’.

‘Our marketplace means that people can do their bit for local communities by helping people to access low cost uniforms, and do a good thing for the environment at the same time by reducing uniform waste. And of course people can earn some extra money which is also a massive benefit”

The marketplace has over 500 users, with 50 joining in the last month, and over 250 current listings.

Users of the marketplace can also choose to donate the sale of their items to fundraise for schools. This means the funds raised from each donated sale go directly to Smarter Uniforms to distribute to schools signed up for their project.

Anna spoke about future plans, and how Smarter Uniforms are looking into the idea of developing a marketplace app, which may be more appealing than the website to young people who want to make some money from selling their pre-loved uniform items.

They are also exploring the idea of hosting a uniform swap event in the autumn, as this is a time when children might change schools, and need new uniform items.

Finally, Anna spoke about how pleased she is to see the Government’s commitment to reducing the number of branded items within schools, which will inevitably lower uniform costs. Anna hopes to speak to Brighton and Hove Council about their plans to implement this in the near future, so that they are ahead of the curve when this is announced nationally.

Smarter uniforms also have a number of free uniform rails across the city and hope to add more in the future.

To find out more about Smarter uniforms and their marketplace, visit their website or watch this short film.