Name(s): Martin Harrison and Tracey Morris

Business: The Salvation Army

Opening hours: Monday to Saturday from 9am until 5pm. Closed on Sunday

When did you open the business and why?

The shop opened here about nine years ago and is one of many across the country. I’ve been here eight years myself – it opened because, like with any of the stores, the goal is to help raise money for the work carried out by the Salvation Army and to encourage the work they do.

Why in this location?

There are more than 400 Salvation Army shops across the UK, and I think at the time there wasn’t one in Oswestry, so that is probably the reason for opening one here.

The stores are very popular – there was a big shop opened in London last year.

Tell us about your business

We SELL pretty much anything and everything including clothing, bric-a-brac, electricals and new goods.

We have a lot of goods donated to us, but we do also have some deliveries coming here.

The people of Oswestry are really generous and we do often have regular customers coming back to make donations more than once.

We don’t really have a set amount of donations that we receive, we can get them on a daily basis, but some days we will receive more than others.

We really appreciate the donations, it’s something that helps us out, helps the charity out and it also helps customers out.

From the point of view of the staff, for people who aren’t employed, we can offer voluntary positions here which helps to boost their CVs and eventually help them into paid work.

As for the Salvation Army as a charity, there’s so much that they do, it’s amazing.

People often see the work they do over Christmas, but they do things all year round to help so many people who might be in need for a number of reasons.

When I started working here, I didn’t realise how much there was that the Salvation Army does that I didn’t know about.

What is your proudest moment?

Personally, I came here eight years ago for four weeks of work experience, and I managed to get a full-time role here, and it’s something I’ve been doing ever since, so I’m proud to have been part of the work here for so long.

It’s great here, I wouldn’t want to be working anywhere else. The staff are a great bunch of people, and the customers are the same. You get to know them and it’s really nice.

It’s a great way to meet people and being able to do something you enjoy, while knowing it’s helping a really good cause, is great.

Any strange requests?

We DON’T really get asked for many strange items, but we have had some odd donations in the past and some things which we can’t really repeat!