Northampton’s Lewis Foundation receives biggest ever donation of 10,000 health and beauty products

A Northampton cancer charity has received its biggest ever donation – £125,000 worth of health and beauty products.

The owners of multi-million-pound enterprise Sol Retail in Swan Valley gifted 10,000 products to The Lewis Foundation to mark the company’s recent 10-year anniversary.

A lorry-load of cosmetics and toiletries, including lip balms, creams, vitamins, shampoo, deodorant, bodywash, toothpaste and more, was delivered to the charity’s warehouse in Kings Heath Industrial Estate and will be placed into free gift packs for adult cancer patients in hospitals across the Midlands.

Lorraine Lewis, co-founder of the charity, said: “We’re astounded by the sheer generosity of Barry, Katy, and the Sol Retail team, so much so that we’ve even had to use an extra warehouse room to temporarily store the stock before our volunteers pack them into our gift bags.

“That chance meeting four years ago has turned into a wonderful business partnership, and we are so very grateful to Sol Retail for choosing to support The Lewis Foundation in this way.

“These items will bring thousands more smiles to individuals who might be feeling frightened and lonely as they receive cancer treatment.”

The business owners first met The Lewis Foundation founders on a small supermarket stand in 2018.

Barry added: “We’ve been following Lorraine and Lee’s journey with real interest. Reading and seeing them in the papers and on TV, and winning national awards for the incredible work they do has been amazing.

“We’ve hit our own major milestones as a business this year too, by becoming Amazon’s biggest retailers and reaching a £10 million turnover on our tenth birthday, so we wanted to do something spectacular to celebrate.

“We have donated products before and also provided business advice to help The Lewis Foundation grow as a charity, but it means so much to us all to know that this substantial donation will make even more of a difference.”

Any surplus stock which cannot be used in The Lewis Foundation’s gift packs will be sold in the charity’s Northampton-based pop-up shop or at fundraising events.