From magazine vendor to running multi-million pound business: 44-year-old UK man’s story

Philip Waltham owns Bulk Vintage Wholesale, which is one of the biggest sustainable fashion businesses in the UK with a turnover of 9 million pounds per year. (Image credit: Bulk Vintage Wholesale website)

A magazine vendor in the United Kingdom has worked his way up to becoming the owner of a sustainable fashion business worth millions of pounds.

Philip Waltham, 44, began selling copies of The Big Issue magazine in London in 1997. He was battling drug addiction at that time.

Initially, he just focused on earning enough to be able to buy drugs but ended up learning important lessons in budgeting and running a business. That made Waltham seek more.

Philip Waltham sold The Big Issue in London in the late Nineties while battling drug addiction.

Now he runs one of Britain’s biggest sustainable fashion wholesalers - and still carries his Big Issue bag around with him https://t.co/gaBPbA2Jfy

— The Big Issue (@BigIssue) January 9, 2022

“They [the Big Issue] taught me how to respect myself,” Waltham was quoted as saying by the BBC. “They taught me how to budget my money and how important a roof was. I had to have money to buy Big Issues so I could sell Big Issues and that taught me how to budget."

After selling magazines for three years, Waltham opened a stall for second-hand clothes in Camden in London. By 2007, he entered the wholesale clothing business, according to The Big Issue.

Waltham now owns Bulk Vintage Wholesale, which is one of the biggest sustainable fashion businesses in the UK with a turnover of 9 million pounds per year.

Waltham’s business repurposes clothing and sells it at its stores. “We fight fast fashion,” he told the magazine. “We save clothing from landfills, we go to these big factories and take clothing and fill up a container every week and ship it back to the UK.”

Waltham is past his days as a vendor but there is one object that he still holds on to – the bag in which he used to carry the magazines.

“That Big Issue bag goes with me everywhere and it has done for all those years since 1997,” Waltham told  The Big Issue. “My girlfriend buys me different bags and different hold-alls but I’ve never used them because I have my Big Issue bag. It’s taught me to be who I am now. It keeps me grounded and humble.”