Give as good as you look!

Now here's a good idea! New Zealand’ s first designer charity auction website: www.the-collection.co.nz. The Collection is an awesome auction site where the fashion-conscious and charity-minded can give and shop 365 days of the year, together!


Founder, Claire Stapleton tells us “the-collection is the place to build on your designer collection, and give to your favourite charity’s collection box”. A real chance to look great and feel good!

Well-dressed New Zealanders who care can auction their pre-loved and new fashion pieces now on the-collection. What makes it different to other auction sites is that the seller gives a percentage of the auction to a charity they believe in.


Claire tells us fashion-hungry shoppers can bid or ‘buy now’ on high quality, fashion labels for an auction-savvy price. Knowing that a percentage of their purchase will go to charity and that the people they are buying off are caring, generous types.

There are nine different charities to choose from on the-collection. New Zealand Aids Foundation, Autism New Zealand, Arthritis New Zealand, Amnesty International, Child Cancer Foundation, KidsCan StandTall Charitable Trust, SPCA New Zealand, WWF-New Zealand and The Asthma Foundation. Amnesty International gets our vote.


The seller can choose a percentage they'd like to give to charity, from 20%, 50% or 100%. There’s no listing or registration fee, only a success fee if a sale is made.

Claire came up with the concept a year ago after wondering why we couldn’t do more with our pre-loved clothes. “I had heard about this new generation called Generation G (Givers) - where it’s not how much you have, but how much you give. This new generation wasn’t just the Bradgelinas out there... but me, my friends, us. Then talking to friends I realised we were all cleaning out our wardrobes and giving away incredible clothes to whoever – because we’ d rather give them away - than get a few bucks out of it! So I thought...Why not use these clothes to make money for the charities we believed in and, if we wanted, still make something for ourselves too. And so the-collection was born.”


Claire also wanted to create a new type of auction site – a stylish, desirable place to auction, browse and buy online. 

“If it is a designer auction site – it should look designer! I also wanted people to enjoy being caught shopping on the site, not ashamed or feel cheap and bargain hunter-ish. the-collection.co.nz is the good-looking, stylish and caring older sister in a world of boyish auction sites.”


So yeah, if you’re cleaning out your wardrobe to make room for new summer pieces – please give to the-collection. We'll be encouraging one of the Fashion Guru team to give it some thought as he gears up to move into a styley new pad - always a good time to downsize the wardrobe.

Email contact@the-collection.co.nz if you’d like anything picked up. Or get to the site and check it out. They're on Twitter and Facebook too.