Man who makes £50k a month selling second hand trainers says 'it's not enough'

A 22-year-old who went from working as a warehouse picker on minimum wage to raking in £50,000 per month selling second hand trainers has said it is "not enough" and he is "not content with it". Jack Long began his business ventures at the age of just 12 by selling unwanted items from family members on eBay.

After completing college in 2021, he took a job as a warehouse picker, where he was tasked with locating and packaging retail items for shipment, all in an effort to save up for his future business endeavour. But in March 2023, Jack's business acumen kicked in when he spotted a pair of Nike Air Force trainers at a car boot sale.

The Buckinghamshire-based businessman snapped them up for £15 and flipped them for double the price, sparking the realisation there was serious money to be made in the trade. By April 2023, Jack had earned around £5,000 through his warehouse work and launched Recycled Streetwear, his venture into the world of pre-loved trainers.

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To begin with, Jack sold around 30 trainers a month, but since joining the real-time shopping app Tilt, he now sells around 1,500 trainers a month, claiming this earns him £50,000 a month, which he mainly puts back into the business. Jack claims he works 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." Talking about his "eureka moment" Jack said: "I was just helping out a family friend, and we saw a pair of trainers and it basically went from there. It was all luck from that point."

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 livestreams.

However, things took off when he began using the Tilt app, where he now livestreams around six evenings a week, for three hours at a time, selling trainers from between £10 to £60 depending on their condition. Jack continued: "Tilt gave us the platform to scale up really quick to where we are now.

"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, often working close to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to keep up with demand.

He continued: "I'd say nothing personally has changed since I started the business I'm just busier and just constantly working. 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 livestreams. 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.