Casino will soon have its own Sewing Basket, with the fabric and needlecraft store set to open on Walker Street on Saturday, 10 October.
The Sewing Basket is a social enterprise run by Achieve Australia, a disability provider that operates across New South Wales and, more recently, south-west Queensland. Manager Geraldine Daniel said Casino was a natural fit for the organisation’s first regional store outside its existing Sydney and Central Coast locations.
“Achieve already has a strong presence there at the moment,” Ms Daniel said. “So we have already been in the community for quite a number of years, just through the delivery of disability services.”
Ms Daniel said the idea grew after local sewing and haberdashery shops closed following the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving a gap in the market.
“The retail space was quite limited, and so a lot of the Casino region’s customers had to head into Lismore to try and go to Spotlight,” she said. “We saw these shops that were empty across the road from the Achieve offices and that’s kind of where I think the spark came from is the fact that the community needed something like us there.”
The new store will operate alongside Achieve’s existing offices on Walker Street.
Achieve provides accommodation, community participation and employment services for people with disability, including three social enterprise arms. Alongside the Sewing Basket, these include Windara Nursery and Cafe, based in Casino, and Achievable Enterprises, which operates in the Sydney metro area.
“Think about Achieve as the organisation we all work for,” Ms Daniel said. “And it’s got three social enterprise arms, and the Sewing Basket is one of those.”
Ms Daniel said the Sewing Basket brand carried a dual purpose for the communities it served.
“Selling Basket kind of stands for two things: it’s disability services, but also sustainability,” she said. “Environmental sustainability, but also ensuring that we have a sustainable social enterprise that can keep supporting the community that we’re in.”
The store will sell donated fabric, patterns, haberdashery and needlecraft supplies, much of it sourced from the wardrobes and homes of people downsizing or moving into aged care. Ms Daniel said prices were kept about 50 per cent below recommended retail pricing to make crafting accessible.
“You might find a vintage button that’s glass that’s from the 1800s,” she said. “It’s all about trying to find a treasure that you don’t normally find in large commercial stores like Spotlight.”
The Casino store will also offer supported employment and volunteering opportunities for people with disabilities, alongside retail staff hired from the local community. Ms Daniel said the model was built around matching people’s interests, whether in crafting or customer service, with a supportive, gradual introduction to the retail floor.
“If they’re not ready for employment as such, but they don’t need a lot of support, and they can work independently, what we can actually do is bring them along from that volunteer perspective,” she said. “They can start with us and then move forward maybe into paid employment.”
People interested in volunteering can apply through an expression of interest link on the Sewing Basket website. Applicants undergo a national criminal record check and a working with children check before an onboarding process.
The launch event will run from 10 am to 12 pm and include a sausage sizzle, along with coffee, tea and refreshments. The first 100 visitors will receive a $5 voucher to use on their next visit. The store will stay open until 1 pm afterwards.
“It attracts people, the smell,” Ms Daniel said of the sausage sizzle. “It’s also about, you know, really trying to, it’s a celebration, right? We want to bring the community together. We want to show them what we’re doing.”
Ms Daniel said the Casino store would eventually offer sewing and knitting workshops for beginners, likely starting in the new year, along with opportunities for local creators to run their own sessions in the space.
“That way we can really make it that creative hub that is the kind of vision that we have for Casino,” she said.
Whether the Sewing Basket expands further into regional New South Wales will depend on how the Casino store settles in and on Achieve’s broader strategy, Ms Daniel said.
“We want to make sure that we’re doing it right first,” she said. “We’ll test the casino market, we’ll make sure that we’ve really listened to the community and then we’ll look at future growth moving forward as well.”
Ms Daniel said a Sewing Basket store had previously opened first in the Sutherland area, with disability services following about a year later once demand became clear. She said a similar approach could unfold in Casino, depending on how the community responded.
The Sewing Basket Casino opening event will be held at 98 Walker Street, Casino, from 10 am on Saturday, 10 October.
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