‘I realised I was unemployable – so I made £1m from my own market stall’

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Roger Wade, 57, is the man behind Boxpark, the iconic series of pop-up dining and entertainment venues that have sprung up in Shoreditch, Croydon and Wembley. He became an entrepreneur out of necessity after graduating from university, he told Telegraph Money.

“My mum always wanted me to become a doctor, so I studied sciences at school and university,” he said.

“I did some volunteering at Guy’s Hospital in London, in geriatrics, and I had a patient who kept insulting me and telling me to go back to Japan. I’m not even Japanese – my dad’s Malaysian, and my mum’s Irish. That experience put me right off medicine.”

Mr Wade spent much of his time at university running nightclubs, an experience that preceded his success as a businessman. “It was the late 80s after all, it was the breakthrough time for house music,” he added. “When I graduated I got a job in advertising, but I got sacked after three months. The same thing happened with my next two jobs – as a media buyer and then as a copywriter.

“The last time I got sacked, I was in New York. I started sending American sportswear back to the UK to sell on at a stall in Greenwich market, and set up another at Camden market. Then I came back to the UK to do that full-time.

“There were a lot of very early mornings, waking up early on Saturdays and Sundays to get down there and start selling. There was also the matter of making sure we had the right pitch to get given market stalls in the first place, which wasn’t easy.

“After getting sacked so many times, I came to the conclusion that I was unemployable and that I’d have to work for myself. I had always been looking for something I was actually good at doing, and it turned out that being an entrepreneur was the best thing for me.

“I’m not one for giving up, and that’s probably the crucial thing. You don’t have to be the cleverest person in the world, but you do need to have a high degree of common sense, as well as resilience, confidence, and belief in yourself and your ideas,” Mr Wade said.

The business that started out on a market stall turned into Boxfresh, a streetwear brand that Mr Wade built over 15 years, until 2005. “My big break came when we signed the contract for our first permanent shop in Covent Garden – it was on Henrietta Street, where Fred Perry’s flagship store is now.

“I sold Boxfresh to Pentland Group, the majority shareholder of JD Sports. In terms of my first million in turnover, we hit that after about five years of selling. But when we got to £1m in profitability, that’s when things got really interesting because trade sales became possible.”

However, not all of Mr Wade’s businesses have prospered. “I started a few other companies before I made a success of Boxfresh,” he said. “My first, Wade Joseph Ltd, went into administration in 1992. My parents had invested their life savings to get it off the ground, so I needed to find a way to pay them back.

“That was an awful experience, but it was also the best lesson I could have hoped for. It was a baptism of fire. There are a few reasons why people become entrepreneurs, and often for young men, as I was at the time, it’s about ego and about proving your worth. I had to completely let that go, and it made me a better businessman.”

Mr Wade blames Brexit for the challenges his business has faced in recent years.

“Brexit has been an appalling failure,” he said. “We saw a loss of very good staff, as much as 10-20pc of our employees, and we haven’t been able to build that back up. The pound is weaker, inflation is higher, supply chain costs are through the roof.”

The issue is a personal one. “People still act as if I’m not British, even though I was born and raised in south London. I’ve created thousands of jobs, and I’m fanatical about football, so you could say I’m more British than your average Brit.

“I want this country to be great, to have a diverse population and embrace immigration.”

What was your first job, and how much were you earning?

My first job was that business with the nightclubs, I was a promoter back in the day. Since then I’ve primarily done youth marketing, and selling to a youth market, so that has definitely helped me in my career.

What does a day in your life look like?

I’m semi-retired now, so I don’t work Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday. I’m the chairman of my own venture capital fund, so I sit with the management team, or potential investments or minority shareholders. I spend about one day a week working with Boxpark.

In my working week I’m in London, but on the weekends I go to Sussex, where I play a lot of golf. I used to be quite lazy, getting up at about 8 or 9am. But now I tend to get up at 7am in the week, spend those first few hours having a coffee and thinking about the day, and then in the afternoon I meet and talk to people, and answer my emails at the end of the day.

I spend about an hour a day causing trouble on LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time trying to get the business community to back the idea of returning to the single market.

What’s your top tip for anyone who wants to make their first million?

Make sure you have as many armaments in your pocket as possible – it’s a good idea to work for people who are in the industry that you want to go into, so you can learn from their mistakes, educate yourself and surround yourself with information.

But also, know that it’s going to be hard – because life is difficult, and if you don’t accept then you haven’t got a chance. Every time you get knocked down, get up. Never say die, and have total belief in what you’re doing. 

Have you ever made £1 million? We want to hear how you did it. Email money@telegraph.co.uk