Roaring trade
With Hugh Man heading up its franchise wing, second-hand retail franchise CeX has gone from strength to strength and now has over 550 stores around the world BY josh russell / photography by emilie sandy
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ew will be shocked to hear that Hugh Man, franchise founder at CeX, the second-hand entertainment franchise, isn’t a huge fan of our throwaway culture. “We’ve got to change this disposable world that we live in,” he says. “We’ve got to stop just throwing stuff out.” While some people seem to buy a new smartphone more often than they buy new socks, Man evidently doesn’t feel this is an irreversible trend. In fact, he has made his livelihood encouraging consumers to unlock the value of their electronics and allow others to access tech at a fraction of the price. “What’s no good to you is perfect for somebody else,” he says. “And that gives us a big market in terms of what we do with this stuff.” However, when Man was a boy growing up in Fulham these grand plans couldn’t have been further from his mind, although he had plenty of chances to rub shoulders with successful people. His father ran a Chinese restaurant around the corner from Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea Football Club. “Obviously I was a Chelsea supporter as a kid,” he says. “The squad used to come to my dad’s restaurant if they lost at home: that was the highlight of my week.” Despite this example, Man admits becoming an entrepreneur wasn’t exactly high on his agenda – although he certainly wasn’t beyond the occasional money-making scheme. “At 12 or 13, I bred rabbits and sold them to pet shops for pocket money,” he
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recalls. “But at that age I probably didn’t know what entrepreneurialism even meant.” Instead much of Man’s energy was invested in trying to make up ground academically. “Due to a childhood illness, I missed a lot of primary school, virtually all of it,” he says. “I didn’t know my alphabet until I was like 11 or 12.” Gaining significantly on his peers during his teenage years, Man found he had a real flair for design and began to aim for a career as an architect or civil engineer. However, his focus on more technical disciplines at A-level ended up proving problematic: finding he had too few qualifications in academic subjects to enter a bachelor's course at university, he opted instead to enter a higher national diploma (HND) programme. “Our managing director Dave Mullins often reminds me that HND stands for ‘have no degree’,” he laughs. “But it allowed me to skip the first year at uni, so I went into the second year doing civil engineering.” After completing his second year at South Bank University, Man decided to take a short break to earn some money selling mortgages and insurance – although this brief interval quickly became a longer one. “Basically I made a bit of dosh and thought ‘hang on, I’ll take a gap year then go back to uni with a bit of money and do it in style’,” he says. “I never went back.” And as things transpired this was rather fortuitous: it was while Man was
05/02/2018 11:45