Useful Dollars, Chav Pounds

It's very confusing, this making money lark. I appear to have sold two downloads of Ozzie Rozzie - HUZZAH! which is great, and which starts to make a dent in the set up costs for the month's money-making enterprises, albeit a mere $4 US income out of about $135 laid out. Confusing because at least one person has told me they bought a book, but I cannot see that transaction on Lulu yet. Confusing also because I keep mixing up pounds and dollars. But, I have not yet started to develop the real cash-producing scheme, the i-chav range of products.

I-CHAV is destined to initially carry three products - a small, easily affordable fun wearable fashion item retailing for under three quid; a slightly more expensive but more "real" item, which will probably be about five quid; and a really nice piece of electronics that in fact you wouldn't mind receiving as a present, despite (or in fact, because of) the i-chav brand being prominent, for about twenty quid. My savvy London street knowledge tells me that these items will sell.

Thing is about this whole chav business - it's big business. I went for a stroll a few weeks ago, as I often do, down Chapel Street market in Islington. It's an old market, it has the best fresh vegetables in the borough, vendors selling nuts, fish and cheese, and stall after stall of batteries, handbags, cheap jewellery, clothes, shoes, and all the unmentionable tasteless tat that people part with their loose change for on a daily basis. The amount of accessories that people buy to tart up their main accessories, i.e. their mobile phone, their MP3 players, is enormous. In a crowded market, I stood gazing, enraptured at the possibilities for ironic, comics addition to this accessory fever. Thus, i-chav was born.

It's this BOTTOM level of commerce that interests me, and all because of the lovely George.

George grew up after WW2 in the East End of London in dire poverty. A bright and able lad, he left school at 14 having been working since the age of 10. He was in several black and white Euston films as a child actor, but there was no way he could afford to attend drama school. Instead, financial, social and family circumstances determined his future which was to take an active and starring role in any and every street scam going, from selling invisible commodities such as piles of bricks (there was a lot of this after the war) to hawking dodgy stuff - by which I mean stolen, dangerous or fake goods - off the back of a truck to passers by, in markets and main shopping streets everywhere that they could before the police turfed them off or pulled them.

George had an amazing knack of knowing exactly what people would pay for the shit he flogged them, and yet, he was not a greedy man. Necessity started him off and continued to drive him. In his late fifties when I came to know him, he was running a "pound shop" in Peterborough called "Madhouse" which, stuck in the middle of a faceless concrete mall, brought a little cheap diversion. It was full of useful things as much as useless ones - electrical plugs, extension leads, needles and thread, mothballs, Taiwanese training shoes, incense, self-assemble paint-it-yourself garden furniture, East European soft metal screwdriver sets with multi-coloured non-standard size rawlplugs, flashing reindeer antennae and battery-powered earmuffs - all sold at truly knock down prices. It was cheaper than Woolworths and a lot more fun.

I was so impressed by the way he understood the buying patterns of his customers. He knew retail inside out, he understood the small, medium and large purchases people make, and the different rationale for the scale of expenditure. He would agonize over paying the rent on the shops he ran, sometimes sailing so near to going bust in a famine period, but his staff were always paid, and he was incredibly generous to everybody. Then he would return from London or Birmingham with a Luton van full of fluffy pink plastic footballs, or maybe nutcrackers which sang "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly", grinning like a child whilst he showed us his next product line and predicted millions. His judgement, variable like the retail world he inhabited, was not always guaranteed to bring results, but he did very well often enough so have a perenially cheerful attitude to his failures. So, the pissing green elf garden crazy water fountain sold not a lot; but the Arsenal arse-scratchers sold out. The luminous hairy jogging pants didn't cover a single leg; but the coolbox with FM radio (perfect for those quiet picnics) went like hot cakes. Friday to Monday, he would tell me proudly, he'd shifted the lot and made five grand.

George never belittled or condescended to his customers, even as he wore Armani suits and ate lobster. He knew that you have to give people choice, even if you know they are going to buy the cheapest thing in the shop. He knew that even if something is shit, if it has humour, if it lifts the mood by diverting from the daily nonsense, people will gladly give you money, and begrudge you none of it.

With this philosophy in mind, the i-chav brand has been born. Now I need to select my products and build my shop.

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