I quit my warehouse job on minimum wage - now I make £50k a month - but it's still not enough

Jack Long, 22, from Buckinghamshire, started his entrepreneurial journey at 12 by selling family members' unwanted items on eBay, and has now launched his own pre-loved trainer business

A 22-year-old who went from working as a minimum wage warehouse picker to making £50,000-a-month selling second-hand trainers said it was "not enough" and he was "not content with it". Jack Long, from Buckinghamshire, started his entrepreneurial journey at 12, selling family members' unwanted items on eBay with a plan to eventually launching his own business.

After finishing college in 2021, he worked as a warehouse picker, responsible for finding and packing retail items for dispatch, to save money for a future business. In March 2023, he stumbled upon a pair of Nike Air Force trainers at a car boot sale, bought them for £15, and sold them for double the price, making him realise he could turn it into a profitable business.

By April 2023, he had raised around £5,000 through warehouse picking, and launched his pre-loved trainer business, Recycled Streetwear. To begin with, Jack sold around 30 trainers per month, but since joining the real-time shopping app Tilt, he sells around 1,500 trainers per month, making £50,000 monthly, which he mainly puts back into the business.

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Jack said he worked 24/7 sourcing, cleaning, and authenticating shoes, while livestreaming himself showing the shoes which are available to buy in the evenings, and he is hoping to become the leading retailer in the pre-loved shoe market.

Jack told PA Real Life: "The £50,000 is not enough, that's how I feel. I'm not content with it really."

"There are so many overheads, I'm putting most things back into the business. I think from when I was very young, I was always buying and selling stuff, and then doing something like this, having my own business, eventually, was the plan."

After finishing college, Jack took a job as a warehouse picker on minimum wage, all part of his scheme to save up enough cash to start his own venture. His breakthrough came in March 2023 when he stumbled upon a pair of Nike Air Force trainers at a car boot sale.

"I was helping out a family friend, and we saw a pair of trainers and it basically went from there," he said. "It was all luck from that point."

"I think I paid £15 for them and sold them for £30, and then from there, I was like, 'I can definitely do something with this'." By April 2023, Jack had hit his £5,000 savings goal and was ready to launch Recycled Streetwear from a commercial unit in Buckinghamshire.

"I was confident about it, but there were mixed opinions (from my family) of whether I should leave the job and do it," he said. "Obviously, now it's paid off but there was definitely some tension."

Jack, who runs his own business, sources his stock from various suppliers and has a meticulous process for preparing the trainers for sale. He explained: "I'm not going to say where we buy them from, but we have a lot of suppliers, and then basically we get them in and go through a full cleaning process on all of them, which will be unlacing the shoes, disinfecting them, cleaning them up, and finally, the prep before they go on the shelves for the live streams."

"We use an app called CheckCheck, which basically authenticates any shoes." The business had a modest beginning, selling about 30 pairs of trainers monthly via his website and TikTok livestreams. However, Jack's fortunes changed when he started using the Tilt app for livestreaming sales six evenings a week, three hours at a time, offering trainers priced from £10 to £60 based on their condition.

"Tilt gave us the platform to scale up really quick to where we are now," he said. "Instead of people having to go to the shops, they can literally do it from the comfort of wherever they are, all they need is a phone and to be able to have a Wi Fi connection to join the streams."

"And then we send everything out, and it's with them within two days, and it's a lot cheaper." Now, Jack sells approximately 1,500 pairs of trainers each month, bringing in around £50,000 in sales. He reinvests most of this into the business and pays himself a salary, the amount of which he prefers to keep private.

Since launching his eco-conscious venture, Jack has found himself incredibly busy, frequently working almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet the high demand. "I'd say nothing personally has changed since I started the business I'm just busier and just constantly working," Jack said.

"We're nowhere near done or where we want to be yet, so there's no time to relax." Currently handling the demands of his business single-handedly, Jack is in the process of running trial shifts for potential new staff members, aiming to bolster his team to support with livestreams.

Jack is determined to see Recycled Streetwear flourish in the future, striving to amplify its environmental impact. He said: "I just want it to keep growing more and want to change the way people shop online."

"I want to be one of the biggest retailers for pre-loved shoes in the country. Hopefully, bit by bit, we can eventually get in touch with the right people, and we can intercept the shoes before they end up in landfills, do them up and give them another life and then people can get them for a really good price as well."

For further information on Tilt or to get the app, head to www.tilt. app.