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S01:E02
This week on How (Not) To Do Business, Chris King sits down with Cherry Haynes and Siôn Whellens of Calverts, the East London design and print co-operative founded in 1977. Calverts has no managers and complete pay parity — everyone earns the same — and it has outlasted almost every other printer in London.
Cherry and Siôn explain why the co-op is happy to hire people who are sceptical of co-ops rather than true believers, how it survived the collapse of London’s print industry by refusing to compete on price, and why they care more about who controls a business than who owns it. Along the way: a 16-year average staff retention, what happens when someone has to leave a place with no line managers, the difference between co-operatives and Employee Ownership Trusts, and practical first steps for anyone thinking about starting one.
Chapters: 00:00 Show introduction 01:14 Introducing Calverts 02:27 How Calverts works as a co-op 03:07 Who they hire — and why 06:56 Surviving London’s declining print industry 09:37 How the culture has changed 12:57 Staff retention and tough decisions 17:35 Learning from other co-operatives 20:17 Managing informal hierarchies 23:00 New generations and systemic change 25:54 Barriers to wider co-op adoption 31:02 Hope and agency in the face of systemic change 35:19 Co-ops vs Employee Ownership Trusts 40:57 How to get started 44:13 The business myth Calverts challenges 45:44 Further resources
Resources mentioned: Calverts — https://www.calverts.coop/ workers.coop (Worker Co-op Federation) — https://www.workers.coop/ Stir to Action — https://www.stirtoaction.com/ Centre for Democratic Business / 21st Century Social Clubs — https://www.democraticbusiness.org/ CoTech (tech co-ops network) and forum — https://www.coops.tech/ / https://community.coops.tech/
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