'I worked in a warehouse for minimum wage - now at 22 I make £50,000 a month'

Jack Long said he was far from content with what he had achieved so far and said there was a lot more to do

A 22-year-old man who went from working as a warehouse picker on minimum wage to making £50,000 per month selling pre-loved trainers said it is “not enough” and he is “not content with it”. Jack Long started his entrepreneurial journey at age 12, selling family members’ unwanted items on eBay with “the plan” of 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 that he could turn this 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, a Buckinghamshire-based business owner, sold around 30 trainers per month, but since joining the real-time shopping app Tilt, Jack now sells around 1,500 trainers per month, making £50,000 monthly, which he mainly puts back into the business. Jack claims he works 24/7 sourcing, cleaning, and authenticating shoes, while live-streaming 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 said: “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.”

Jack has always been entrepreneurial – at age 12 he sold family members’ unwanted items on eBay to make a profit.

He said: “It was random books, clothing items, shoes, like one or two items a month. Even £5 at the time was a lot. 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 leaving college in 2021, Jack worked as a warehouse picker, earning minimum wage, with the aim of saving enough money to launch a business. In March 2023, he finally had his eureka moment after spotting a pair of Nike Air Force trainers at a car boot sale.

“I was just helping out a family friend, and we saw a pair of trainers and it basically went from there,” Jack added. “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’.”

In April 2023, after meeting his target of £5,000, he officially launched Recycled Streetwear, operating out of 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,” Jack explained. “Obviously, now it’s paid off, but there was definitely some tension.”

Day-to-day, Jack sources his stock from suppliers, carefully cleaning each pair and verifying their authenticity.

He said: “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 slow start, initially selling around 30 pairs of trainers a month through his website and TikTok live-streams. However, things took off when he began using the Tilt app, where he now live-streams around six evenings a week, for three hours at a time, selling trainers from between £10 to £60 depending on their condition.

“Tilt gave us the platform to scale up really quick to where we are now,” Jack explained. “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.”

On average, Jack sells around 1,500 pairs of trainers per month, generating about £50,000 in sales – he puts most of this back into the business, as well as giving himself a wage, which he is not willing to disclose. Since launching Recycled Streetwear, he has been incredibly busy, working long hours to keep up with demand.

“I’d say nothing personally has changed since I started the business – I’m just busier and just constantly working,” Jack explained. “We’re nowhere near done or where we want to be yet, so there’s no time to relax.”

At the moment, he operates it himself, but currently has several staff on trial shifts as he is hoping to hire new people to help with live streams. Looking to the future, Jack hopes his business will continue to grow and make even more of a positive impact on the environment.

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.”

To find out more about Tilt or to download the app visit www.tilt.app