How a worker co-op outlasted the collapse of London's print trade

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.

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Clerkenwell and then the East End were once full of print shops. Most are long gone. Calverts is still a proper printing outfit, and in this episode Cherry and Siôn dig into why. They 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.

What we get into:

• Why Calverts recruits for curiosity and good questions, not co-op credentials — and why scepticism is welcome
• Surviving London's print decline by being the best rather than the cheapest
• Overcoming the old "upstairs/downstairs" divide between the office and the print room
• A 16-year average staff retention — and the hardest decisions, when someone has to leave a place with no line managers
• Borrowing grievance and membership processes from other co-ops, including Suma in Yorkshire
• Managing informal hierarchies, succession, and handing over knowledge as long-serving members step back
• The structural and cultural barriers to co-ops going further: access to capital, and the deep belief that capital — not work — makes the world go round
• Co-operatives versus Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs): ownership versus control, and what gets lost
• Practical first steps for anyone thinking about starting a co-op or converting an existing business

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 — the East London design and print co-operative
• workers.coop — the Worker Co-op Federation: case studies, how-tos, explainers and an open forum
• Stir to Action and its Centre for Democratic Business, including the 21st Century Social Clubs programme
• CoTech — the UK network of tech co-ops — and its open forum