A man who lives in Wimbledon has started a new platform where parents can buy, sell, request and donate second-hand school uniforms all year-round, and is looking for Kingston schools to partner with.

Matisse Ghaddaf, whose daughter attends Tiffin Girls' School in Kingston, launched Outgrew in May this year.

In an exclusive interview with Nub News, Ghaddaf said: "My career actually has nothing to do with retail or education - it is in data and risk analytics, and I work for a major US bank in the city.

"But I think a lot about trust and how money moves safely between people and how data actually impacts clients is probably what drew me to create Outgrew. So, I started the foundation of my platform some time last year.

"As a parent with a full-time job, it took me a while to get around to putting all the moving parts for Outgrew together. But officially, the actual platform came to stand on its own sometime early this year in May."

Ghaddaf explained that the inspiration behind Outgrew came from the idea that "uniforms are often outgrown before they wear out and end up in a cupboard while other families are forced to pay full price for a new uniform".

He added: "Schools now actually have to make secondhand uniforms available, but they have no easy way to do it. So I built one, really.

"It came out of, I wouldn't say frustration, but curiosity about how we could help other parents to not go through the same dilemma in terms of every time our kids need a new uniform, we have to think about, 'how much are we going to pay for the uniforms?' And, 'where would we actually get it from?' It just never felt right.

"Perfectly good uniforms often sit in drawers or head to the landfill, while other families at the same school are spending hundreds on the same item, brand new.

"The waste bothered me quite a lot, and the cost bothered me even more. So, I tried mutual auctions and Facebook groups full of strangers, market-based apps that were really built for this, but there was no school filtering, no trust, no structure.

"And my children's schools would send out emails about secondhand sales at times, on tables or set up on school property.

"So, I usually end up not going, nor my wife, because the sales never fit around our schedule or our usual drop-off and connection times, and to be honest, it always felt disorganised and messy."

Ghaddaf continued: "Then there were the WhatsApp groups, but, of course, notifications popping up about items were usually missed or failed, mixed in with everything else. It was hard to track.

"So, that's where the idea came from - to say, 'well, how can I make this better?' 'How can I actually help and support the community in a way that parents like myself, of which there are plenty out there, do not have to face the same dilemma every single day in terms of where am I going to get the next secondhand uniform.'

"I also realised that some parents are not able to afford full-priced uniforms, so Outgrew makes uniform buying more affordable.

"It gives access to the parents who are tech-savvy and can access these kinds of platforms as and when they are available and free.

Outgrew is available 24/7 for parents to have a look, list items and buy items as and when they need to.And schools do not have to pay to join the app.

"The platform is simple to use in many ways," Ghaddaf said.

There is no membership or subscription. Parents sign up with a code that is provided by their children's schools if they are partnered with Outgrew.

Ghaddaf said: "And that code becomes their guide rail in terms of all the school parents are allowed to be part of that school community.

"And the school code allows parents to buy and sell within that school. So, parents can list, and they can buy items when they log in to the app themselves.

"I guess, in a way, you could say Outgrew is similar to Vinted or eBay or any other marketplace platform.

"You have your login details, you log in, and then it's free to browse, to look at, and to list items."

Schools partnered with Outgrew and their Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) receive a contribution for every parent's sale of a uniform from that school.

"I have put that in place so the schools benefit as well," Ghaddaf said.

He added: "That means the school does nothing in the background. All they do is set up their own school bank account or the details of where their finances go in and out of their account.

"And then parents join Outgrew through the school code and use the app. Upon checkout, automatically £1 out of every single sale goes back to the school community or to the school PTA accounts.

"However, an additional aspect that I have recently added just to bolster this contribution is that parents can top up this contribution at checkout. It is optional, but as a parent, I know schools need some extra help, and I've been contributing a lot to my kids' schools.

"I've always wanted to give more, but it has always been sort of difficult.

Again, with this additional tool, schools do not have to do anything. All they have to do is monitor their dashboards with the income that they're making from every single sale that they disclose to our group."

Schools that have their own uniform shops can also list items on Outgrew whether they are donated or have been left in a lost property box and never claimed.

Ghaddaf said: "The school shop on the same platform is accessible by the same parents who are advertising.

"So, when the parents log into their own account, they see three things on there. One of them is other parents selling other stuff. The second thing is parents who are requesting items (which is the good thing about creating the demand and supply).

"If I'm a parent, for example, and I need a blazer, I'm not going to be logging on every day looking for somebody who has the blazer I need. But what I can do is I can log in, and I can request a blazer for Year 9 or Year 8 with this size, with this condition. Somebody, like a different parent, will log in and they will see this as a requested item.

"If they have an item, they would immediately contact me and would probably agree to sell that blazer. That's the second part.

"The third part is you can see the school shop showcasing the school's items."

Schools can also use their Outgrew page to sell donated uniform and unclaimed lost property to parents at the school.

Ghaddaf explained that there is a ten per cent fee on all school shop items.

"That means when the school gets an item, automatically there will be up to 10 per cent that will come out from the platform fee," Ghaddaf said.

He added: "90 per cent goes back to the schools, and for the parents, there is a lot for them to purchase. So, if I were selling anything on Outgrew, it's 100 per cent free for me to list everything, and I will get 100 per cent back.

"However, the person purchasing it will have to pay; I think it's currently between 6 per cent and 8 per cent. So, very, very, very small fees. If you want to compare it to, for example, eBay or Vinted, they're going to be roughly between 12 and 18 per cent."

Ghaddaff has already partnered with schools in Wimbledon, Tooting, Croydon and Wandsworth and is now looking to partner with schools in Kingston as "it is the next natural geographical move".

He said: "I've covered a lot of ground in Wimbledon, so now I'm applying to Kingston, but I am staying local and not looking to go national in one big bang; this is a sort of incremental testing area."

Ghaddaf explained that the response from the schools he has already partnered with has been "very, very encouraging" despite it still being early days.

He added: "There are over 50 parents now who have joined the platform through word of mouth, and a head teacher mentioned us in their school newsletter to all the parents in the school.

"So, that's triggered another wave of memberships from the parents as well.

"Trinity, St. Mary's in Ballham has come on board, and currently they are in the process of doing the same thing, and they have already listed 22 items on their own shop.

"And currently I have three schools that I'm scheduled to have a demo with. So, overall it's been encouraging, and the feedback that I have been getting has been quite positive so far."

Ghaddaf has signed up for the Department of Education's (DfE) full list of schools in the country, so any school can join Outgrew.

All they have to do is sign up as a school admin, provide their emails, set up their accounts and select the school that they wish to represent.

"And that's it. It's a one, two, three process, really", Ghaddaf said.

Schools wishing to join Outgrew can do so by emailing Ghaddaf at [email protected]. He expects to respond on the same day.

More information on Outgrew can be found via its website here.