Business in the Jubilee line station for and run by young people, curates lost property to sell, creating employment and opportunity
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A shop with a difference has opened in Canary Wharf Tube Station.
On the face of it, New Working Class (NWC) is a business that sells curated and upcycled items that commuters and Londoners have lost via partnerships with TfL, The O2 and Chiltern Railways.
But it’s more than that. It’s an operation designed to give young people an opportunity to learn, to work and to belong to something – it’s also run by them, with profits reinvested so it can grow and reach more people.
The initiative is the brainchild of James Scroggs, a former marketing director at MTV and a serial entrepreneur who’s pursued ventures in technology, music and fashion.
“I wear many hats professionally and I had the idea for NWC 25 years ago,” he said.
“I was working in Camden at MTV – it was just at the birth of the social web, when uploading became the new downloading and the web became the great leveller for young people.
“They weren’t being judged by the brand of their trainers or the colour scheme they were wearing – they were using the internet as a great creative blackboard.
“At the time, I was particularly struck by the number of people knocking on my door just out of education who were feeling desperately lost.
“I tried to convince my CEO at the time that we should take over a chippy next door that was constantly changing hands and turn it into a young person’s incubator, lovingly called the House Of Opportunity.
“But, politely, he said no. I parked the idea and my career moved in two parallel directions.
“One was to get involved with and then chair suicide prevention organisation CALM – the Campaign Against Living Miserably – founded by an amazing lady called Jane Powell.
“The other was to leave MTV and get involved in entrepreneurship.
“During lockdown, I came back to the idea of young people feeling lost. I have a 21-year-old son and, while I’m not suggesting he’s lost, I feel the pain of a generation.
“I thought it would be an amazing idea to put a business on the high street that would be a safe space for young people to explore who they are at the end of their education.
“From the start we wanted it to be transparently evident that it’s run by them, doing exactly that.
“My belief was that, if I could create a business which was literally built by young people for other young people, and you could scale it, then it would inspire others.”
from a pilot to New Working Class Canary Wharf
Following a pilot program in Clapham, NWC recently opened its doors in Canary Wharf, having found space in the station through TfL property company Places For London.
“It started as an entrepreneurship programme – all we had was a board table and an empty room,” said James.
“I was the token old guy here not because I’m a teacher or a trainer, but because I have a feeling for what young people are and what their potential is.
“In the end, what we realised was that the most interesting part of the project would be to see how NWC could become an employer.
“A year on and we’ve done that. We’re a bona fide employer – we’re starting on that journey – and we’ll open the entrepreneurship programme in the New Year.
“We have nine people who have been through the programme and have stayed with the business.
“All of them are thinking of ways to generate revenue so we can afford to bring in more students in the future.
“Ultimately, we want to open multiple retail outlets across London but also to build an end-to-end operation behind the scenes to not only work with our existing suppliers but also to attract new ones.
“For example, we’d love to deal with dead stock that is costing people money.”
a place where we can help ourselves
Valeriia Vozniuk, 23, is operations lead at NWC.
Forced to abandon her studies to become a vet in Ukraine by the war, she arrived in the UK aged 19, initially returning to university before leaving to embark on this opportunity.
She said: “As a young person, work experience often means low level tasks that you don’t really gain anything from, but I received the offer from NWC and thought there was no harm in trying it.
“I came to the induction and James was there, talking about his background and the learning curve he’s been on in life.
“He was being vulnerable and actually talking about his mistakes and what he’s done in business. I think something switched on in me as a result.
“It really felt like he was looking at young people not as free labour but as assets for an organisation.
“It was to help us, but also to create something where we could help ourselves, which was something new for me. That was a year ago.
“While I started as community lead, I realised I was better at operations, so that’s my role now.
“I hope people who come in to visit don’t think this is only about young people working in retail. It’s young people creating opportunities for each other.
“It’s generating revenue to support us and it’s a safe space for me to think about how I can contribute to the world.
“Here I don’t have to run, I can sit down and think.”
curated and upcylced
At present NWC sells clothes selected and sorted into different price brackets. Higher value items are displayed in the shop’s Gold section, while older pieces feature in its Vintage range.
Next door to the retail space is another unit where stock is brought in, sorted and some is chosen for upcycling with work done or details added to boost its value.
Pricing is aimed at supporting the London Living Wage paid to employees.
Having officially opened its doors, the team are now exploring how the space might be used in the coming weeks and months, having already undertaken a free umbrella giveaway to create a bit of buzz.
Ideas include hosting workshops and live music to help get more people through the door.
James said: “We are truly independent and we’re trying to do something meaningful.
“There are lots of young people who live in the Isle Of Dogs and travel through here.
“I think we have a strong constituency to tap into here.
“We are slightly hidden here, but we’ll find our audience.
“We’re also looking at taking in donations and we have a Vinted space, which is slow at the moment, but the ambition there is to build a marketplace in time.
“We may appoint someone to look after our digital footprint.”
finding self-worth
At the heart of NWC is its circular logo, symbolising learning, working and belonging.
James said: “There are still a few things I’m interested in, and it comes back to my mental health work.
“We’re told that we’re only as good as the validation given to us by others, but part of the mission of NWC is that I believe we find our self-worth ourselves and then you tell your story.
“That is then set in the context of a workplace which is judging young people as snowflakes, and now AI is coming along and taking a lot of those first rung jobs – the old model has essentially been blown up.
“The career path now is more like an hour-glass than a ladder. You have to ask the question: ‘Who is going to be running a business in 10 years’ time if we don’t give young people their self-worth.
“NWC offers people the chance to try lots of different things and the beauty of the programme is that they can also self-organise.
“Valeriia put her hand up and said she was interested in studying social media marketing, so I thought: ‘Brilliant, go away and study it a bit and then come back and run our social media’. That drive to appoint herself has come from somewhere and this is a place in which she can explore it.”
As time moves on, the business may continue to evolve with other product lines already under consideration. Following TfL’s current rules, lost property must be stored for three months, but after that, NWC is free to take it and sell it.
Valeriia said: “One of our plans is to create multiple retail outlets, not just for fashion.
“Thinking about what young people are interested in beyond clothes, that might be sports equipment, for example.
“There are so many items that get lost and TfL has some really beautiful tennis rackets.”
key details: New Working Class
New Working Class is located in Canary Wharf’s Jubilee line station to the right of the ticket barriers from the main entrance.
You can find out more about its mission and what’s on offer via its website.
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