Can hipsters save the world?
It’s easy to mock the beards, tattoos and fixed-wheel bicycles of east London, but its ‘flat white economy’ is here to stay. Ed Cumming on the revolution that’s changing Britain
Cereal Killer is a café on Brick Lane in east London that serves breakfast cereal. It opened last December to a fusillade of indignant fury. What kind of fool would pay £3 for a bowl of something when they could go to a supermarket and buy two boxes for the same price? A reporter for Channel 4 asked the café’s owners, bearded Irish twins Gary and Alan Keely, whether it was sensitive to open such a ridiculous restaurant in Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest boroughs in the country.
More than anything else, however, the new café was seen as the latest high-water mark of hipsterism, a sign that the specialisation of leisure pursuits in east London had gone too far. Twenty-first-century hipsterism can be hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Beards, plaid, tattoos, thick glasses, fixed-gear bicycles, artisanal breads (artisanal anything, really), Apple products, cold-pressed juices… these are some of the outward signs. But a new book by the economist Douglas McWilliams, The Flat White Economy, suggests that hipsters, and the ecosystem surrounding them, represent the future of British prosperity. Not only are they greener and more ethical than the rest of us, but the industries in which they work are driving our economy. We mock them at our peril.
At the last census 150,000 people in London were reported to be working in the flat white economy
Perhaps fittingly the book has had a choppier passage to publication than your average pop-economics number. The chairman of the Centre for Economic and Business Research (Cebr), and a free-market conservative who has advised George Osborne, McWilliams was in the news last week when he announced that he was taking a sabbatical in the wake of allegations that he smoked crack cocaine at a house in Hornsey. It was unfortunate timing, a fortnight before the book’s release.
Named after the favourite drink of the fixed-gear generation, the flat white economy is a portmanteau phrase for an “amazing phenomenon that has surreptitiously changed the whole nature of London – and to some extent the UK economy”. From Cebr’s offices in Old Street, McWilliams had a front-row view of the changes during the past decade. What was once a hub for artists and bohemians has become the European centre for a creative, internet-driven new wing of the economy. With the reputation of the financial services in tatters and more traditional industries continuing their decline, this new source of growth has appeared just when the country needed it. To walk from Old Street roundabout to Shoreditch High Street is to see an extraordinary mix of open-plan offices and galleries, Asian restaurants with fat queues outside and cafés that will mend your bicycle, sprinkled with shark-eyed estate agents and a few resilient kebab shops. It breeds resentment and satire – none more prescient than Charlie Brooker’s Nathan Barley, a decade old this year – precisely because it is dynamic and interesting.
The flat white economy is driven by online retail and marketing but it comprises many different businesses: McWilliams argues that it is mainly defined by the types of people it employs. At the consumer end this leads to cafés and niche shops, such as the shipping-container Boxpark in Shoreditch. The new trendsetters don’t have as much money as their “loadsamoney” forebears from the financial services in the 80s and 90s, and as a consequence their spending patterns are driven by novelty rather than cost. “They can’t price their styles out of the market, so to keep ahead their styles have to keep changing,” McWilliams told me, when I spoke to him before last week’s allegations. “They also drink an awful lot of coffee.” (The stats bear him out. Since 2007, coffee sales have risen by 50% while sales of champagne have fallen by a quarter.)
Neither do they have much space. “They share flats and often share bedrooms,” he said. “They don’t have space for cups and saucers and dining rooms, so it makes more sense to head out to a café for breakfast. They save on ownership and travel light. They wear skinny jeans instead of suits. They have one or two expensive electronic products, but on the whole they are less materialistic than their parents’ generation. They buy bicycles rather than Porsches.”
Britain’s online fashion businesses are worth more than $10bn. New York and California don’t come close
Chris Morton, Lyst
And they work, most likely, in a job powered by the internet. In the two years to March 2014, 32,000 businesses were created in a single Old Street postcode – EC1V. It is an extraordinary figure, even if some of them are just lone wolves with a MacBook. At the last census 150,000 people in London were reported to be working in the flat white economy, although McWilliams thinks that this may be closer to 200,000 now. The majority work in a tiny area around the Old Street roundabout. At its peak, the City of London employed 390,000. McWilliams’s book says that in 2012 the flat white economy contributed 7.6% of the UK’s GDP. By 2025, he estimates, it will be 15.8% and will be the largest single business sector in the UK.
“It’s said that Britain has not been good at creating technology: the Facebooks, the Googles, the Amazons,” McWilliams tells me. “But what people don’t realise is that Britain has been very good at using the technology. In online retail and marketing, this country leads the rest of the world. These are areas where creativity yields real value. I wonder if part of the reason British companies don’t become Facebook is because British people are too polite to become billionaires.
“You’d have thought that America, which is where catalogue shopping took off and population density is much lower, would be a good place for this kind of business, but it hasn’t happened. I don’t really have a good theory for why that is – perhaps in Britain we are trusting. One of the reasons people are apprehensive about shopping online is a fear that their card details will be stolen, but we have quite a low level of fraud.”
The future is hip: Chris Morton, internet entrepreneur and founder of Lyst.
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The future is hip: Chris Morton, internet entrepreneur and founder of Lyst.
Entrepreneur Chris Morton, 32, has a different explanation. With a neat Tom Ford beard and a smooth mid-Atlantic burr (he was born in Oxford, but spent some of his childhood on the east coast of America), he would make a good poster boy for British entrepreneurs. After reading natural sciences at Cambridge he worked in venture capital before founding Lyst in 2010. The site offers a personalised shopping experience, using data to help users generate their own digital shopfronts from the possible millions of items on the market. In a world where more or less everything is a click away, Lyst aims to help shoppers sift the chaff.
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“In Britain the department stores were slow to catch on to the internet, much slower than their American equivalents,” he told me. “That void created space for new companies, like Asos and the Net a Porter group, to spring up. People don’t realise it, but Britain’s online fashion businesses have been worth more than $10bn. New York and the Bay Area in California don’t come close to that.” Lyst has expanded quickly, from 20 employees to 80 in the past year alone, and occupied four different spaces.
“East London is the best place in the world to start a business like ours. All of our offices have been within a two-minute walk of each other. We started in Hoxton Street and then moved to a place off Curtain Road, and then to opposite Shoreditch High Street. Finally, last year, we moved to the White Cube gallery in Hoxton Square.”
Between 2000 and 2012, White Cube was a focal point of the Young British Artists movement – where the Damien Hirsts and Tracey Emins would meet and exhibit. It feels appropriate that the space has now become a home for the new iteration of Shoreditch, where the medium is pixels rather than paint.
“When we first came there were few other companies here,” Morton added. “It was cheap – the rent was just £3 per square foot – but it was also fun. There were bars to hang out in and whenever you left the office you would bump into somebody else starting a different business, but with similar problems. You could share tips about what kind of cloud computing to use or whatever. Those ad hoc meetings are incredibly important in this industry. Since we arrived an ecosystem has grown up that acquires its own momentum.”
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There are problems with the speed of growth. Rent in new offices is now £60 per square foot. No wonder the artists have gone elsewhere to starve in their garrets. Given the difficulty of getting funding and income in the early years of a tech start-up, and the possibilities the internet allows for working remotely, you might think that the industry would be more dispersed. But Morton said the opposite is happening. It is more important than ever to have everyone in the same space.
“Many of our employees live in Bethnal Green and Dalston and Islington, so it’s easy for them to cycle in. Developers and data scientists might be working for banks in the City. They can look down from their tower offices and see Shoreditch and think, ‘Why am I up here being part of the corporate machine, when I could be down there helping to change the world?’ To start a business you also need access to venture capital an
สีสันสามารถช่วยโลก ซึ่งง่ายต่อการซ่อมเบียด รอยสัก และจักรยานล้อลอนดอนตะวันออก แต่ของ 'แบนขาวเศรษฐกิจ' อยู่ที่นี่อยู่ Ed Cumming ในการปฏิวัติที่จะเปลี่ยนแปลงราชอาณาจักรนักฆ่าจากธัญพืชเป็นคาเฟ่บนอิฐเลนในลอนดอนตะวันออกรองรับอาหารเช้าธัญพืช มันเปิดธันวาคมล่าสุดกับ fusillade ของความโกรธไม่พอใจ อะไรโง่จะจ่าย £3 ชามของบางสิ่งบางอย่างเมื่อพวกเขาสามารถไปที่ซุปเปอร์มาร์เก็ต และซื้อสองกล่องราคา ผู้สื่อข่าวช่อง 4 ถามเจ้าของคาเฟ่ bearded ไอริชคู่ Gary และ Alan Keely ไม่ว่าจะมีความไวต่อการเปิดร้านไร้สาระในทาวเวอร์แฮมเล็ตส์ boroughs จนที่สุดประเทศหนึ่งยิ่งกว่าสิ่งอื่น ไร คาเฟ่ใหม่ถูกเห็นเป็นหมายน้ำ–สูงของ hipsterism เครื่องหมายที่ได้ของเข้าชั้นในลอนดอนตะวันออกหายไปไหนไกล ล่าสุด Hipsterism ยี่สิบศตวรรษแรกสามารถยากที่จะกำหนด แต่คุณรู้ว่าเมื่อคุณดู เบียด plaid รอยสัก แว่น ตาหนา ฟิกซ์เกียร์จักรยาน ขนมปังทุก ๆ (ทุก ๆ สิ่ง จริง ๆ), ผลิตภัณฑ์แอปเปิ้ล กดน้ำเย็นน้ำผลไม้...เหล่านี้คือบางส่วนของสัญญาณขาออก แต่หนังสือใหม่ โดยนักเศรษฐศาสตร์ McWilliams ดักลาส เดอะแบนขาวเศรษฐกิจ แนะนำที่ สีสัน และระบบนิเวศโดยรอบ นั้นหมายถึงอนาคตของอังกฤษเจริญ ไม่มีพวกเขา greener และด้านจริยธรรมเพิ่มมากขึ้นกว่าเหลือของเรา แต่อุตสาหกรรมงานขับเศรษฐกิจ เราซ่อมได้ที่มังกรของเราที่สุดท้าย สำนึก 150, 000 คนในลอนดอนได้รายงานจะทำงานในเศรษฐกิจแบนสีขาวบางที fittingly หนังสือได้มีเส้นทาง choppier การพิมพ์มากกว่าจำนวนของคุณป๊อปเศรษฐศาสตร์เฉลี่ย ประธานศูนย์เศรษฐกิจ และธุรกิจวิจัย (Cebr), และอนุรักษนิยมตลาดฟรีที่ได้แนะนำให้จอร์จออสบอร์น McWilliams ได้ข่าวสัปดาห์เมื่อเขาประกาศว่า เขาคือการเป็น sabbatical ในการปลุกของอย่างว่า เขาควันโคเคนแตกที่บ้านใน Hornsey โชคร้ายกำหนดเวลา สั้น ๆ ก่อนที่จะปล่อยของหนังสือได้ชื่อหลังหวานอร่อยรุ่นเกียร์- เศรษฐกิจแบนสีขาวมีกระเป๋าวลีสำหรับการ "ตื่นตาตื่นใจปรากฏการณ์ที่มีการเปลี่ยนแปลง surreptitiously ธรรมชาติทั้งหมด ของ ลอนดอน – และบางขอบเขต UK เศรษฐกิจ" จากสำนักงานของ Cebr เก่าถนน McWilliams มีมุมแถวหน้าของการเปลี่ยนแปลงในช่วงทศวรรษที่ สิ่งเคยฮับสำหรับศิลปินและ bohemians ได้กลายเป็น ศูนย์การสร้างสรรค์ อินเทอร์เน็ตขับเคลื่อนใหม่ปีกของเศรษฐกิจยุโรป มีชื่อเสียงของบริการทางการเงินในอุตสาหกรรมดั้งเดิมของพวกเขาลดลงอย่างต่อเนื่องและ tatters แหล่งใหม่นี้เจริญเติบโตมีปรากฏเพียงเมื่อประเทศต้องการมัน เดินจากถนนเก่าวงเวียนไป Shoreditch ถนนจะเห็นการผสมผสานพิเศษเปิดสำนักงาน และเก็บ ร้านเอเชียกับคิวไขมันนอกคาเฟ่ที่จะซ่อมจักรยานของคุณ โรย ด้วยตาฉลามตัวแทนอสังหาริมทรัพย์และร้านสะเต๊ะยืดหยุ่นกี่ ขยายพันธุ์ขุ่นและเสียดสี – ไม่มี prescient ยิ่งกว่านาธานบรุ๊คชาข้าวบาร์เลย์ ทศวรรษเก่าปีนี้เนื่องจากเป็นไดนามิก และน่าสนใจขาวแบนเศรษฐกิจถูกควบคุม โดยออนไลน์ขายปลีกและการตลาด แต่มันประกอบด้วยธุรกิจต่าง ๆ: McWilliams จนว่า จะส่วนใหญ่ถูกกำหนด โดยชนิดของคนที่มันใช้ ที่สุดผู้บริโภค นี้นำไปสู่โพรงและคาเฟ่ร้าน เช่น Boxpark-ตู้คอนเทนเนอร์ใน Shoreditch Trendsetters ใหม่ไม่มีเงินมากที่สุดเป็น forebears ของ "loadsamoney" จากบริการทางการเงิน 80s และ 90s และผล การขับเคลื่อนรูปแบบการใช้ ด้วยนวัตกรรมมากกว่าต้นทุน "พวกเขาไม่สามารถราคาลักษณะของพวกเขาออกจากตลาด เพื่อให้ข้างหน้าลักษณะของพวกเขาต้องการให้เปลี่ยน McWilliams บอก เมื่อฉันพูดกับเขาก่อนสัปดาห์สุดท้ายของข้อ "พวกเขายังดื่มกาแฟจำนวนมากแวะ" (สถิติหมีเขาออก ตั้งแต่ 2007 กาแฟขายได้เกิดขึ้น 50% ในขณะที่ขายแชมเปญได้ลดลงจากไตรมาส)ไม่มีพื้นที่มากขึ้น "พวกเขาร่วมแฟลต และมักใช้ห้องนอน เขากล่าวว่า "ไม่มีพื้นที่สำหรับถ้วย และ saucers และ ห้องรับประทานอาหาร จึงทำให้รู้สึกมากขึ้นจะหัวออกไปร้านกาแฟสำหรับอาหารเช้า พวกเขาบันทึกในความเป็นเจ้าของ และเที่ยว พวกเขาสวมใส่กางเกงยีนส์ผอมแทนชุด มีหนึ่ง หรือสองแพงผลิตภัณฑ์อิเล็กทรอนิกส์ แต่ในทั้ง เป็นรูปธรรมน้อยกว่ารุ่นพ่อแม่ของพวกเขา พวกเขาซื้อจักรยานมากกว่า Porsches "ธุรกิจแฟชั่นออนไลน์ของสหราชอาณาจักรมีมูลค่ามากกว่า $10bn อย่ามาปิดนิวยอร์กและแคลิฟอร์เนียChris Morton, LystAnd they work, most likely, in a job powered by the internet. In the two years to March 2014, 32,000 businesses were created in a single Old Street postcode – EC1V. It is an extraordinary figure, even if some of them are just lone wolves with a MacBook. At the last census 150,000 people in London were reported to be working in the flat white economy, although McWilliams thinks that this may be closer to 200,000 now. The majority work in a tiny area around the Old Street roundabout. At its peak, the City of London employed 390,000. McWilliams’s book says that in 2012 the flat white economy contributed 7.6% of the UK’s GDP. By 2025, he estimates, it will be 15.8% and will be the largest single business sector in the UK.“It’s said that Britain has not been good at creating technology: the Facebooks, the Googles, the Amazons,” McWilliams tells me. “But what people don’t realise is that Britain has been very good at using the technology. In online retail and marketing, this country leads the rest of the world. These are areas where creativity yields real value. I wonder if part of the reason British companies don’t become Facebook is because British people are too polite to become billionaires.“You’d have thought that America, which is where catalogue shopping took off and population density is much lower, would be a good place for this kind of business, but it hasn’t happened. I don’t really have a good theory for why that is – perhaps in Britain we are trusting. One of the reasons people are apprehensive about shopping online is a fear that their card details will be stolen, but we have quite a low level of fraud.”The future is hip: Chris Morton, internet entrepreneur and founder of Lyst.Facebook Twitter PinterestThe future is hip: Chris Morton, internet entrepreneur and founder of Lyst.Entrepreneur Chris Morton, 32, has a different explanation. With a neat Tom Ford beard and a smooth mid-Atlantic burr (he was born in Oxford, but spent some of his childhood on the east coast of America), he would make a good poster boy for British entrepreneurs. After reading natural sciences at Cambridge he worked in venture capital before founding Lyst in 2010. The site offers a personalised shopping experience, using data to help users generate their own digital shopfronts from the possible millions of items on the market. In a world where more or less everything is a click away, Lyst aims to help shoppers sift the chaff.Advertisement“In Britain the department stores were slow to catch on to the internet, much slower than their American equivalents,” he told me. “That void created space for new companies, like Asos and the Net a Porter group, to spring up. People don’t realise it, but Britain’s online fashion businesses have been worth more than $10bn. New York and the Bay Area in California don’t come close to that.” Lyst has expanded quickly, from 20 employees to 80 in the past year alone, and occupied four different spaces.“East London is the best place in the world to start a business like ours. All of our offices have been within a two-minute walk of each other. We started in Hoxton Street and then moved to a place off Curtain Road, and then to opposite Shoreditch High Street. Finally, last year, we moved to the White Cube gallery in Hoxton Square.”Between 2000 and 2012, White Cube was a focal point of the Young British Artists movement – where the Damien Hirsts and Tracey Emins would meet and exhibit. It feels appropriate that the space has now become a home for the new iteration of Shoreditch, where the medium is pixels rather than paint.“When we first came there were few other companies here,” Morton added. “It was cheap – the rent was just £3 per square foot – but it was also fun. There were bars to hang out in and whenever you left the office you would bump into somebody else starting a different business, but with similar problems. You could share tips about what kind of cloud computing to use or whatever. Those ad hoc meetings are incredibly important in this industry. Since we arrived an ecosystem has grown up that acquires its own momentum.”
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There are problems with the speed of growth. Rent in new offices is now £60 per square foot. No wonder the artists have gone elsewhere to starve in their garrets. Given the difficulty of getting funding and income in the early years of a tech start-up, and the possibilities the internet allows for working remotely, you might think that the industry would be more dispersed. But Morton said the opposite is happening. It is more important than ever to have everyone in the same space.
“Many of our employees live in Bethnal Green and Dalston and Islington, so it’s easy for them to cycle in. Developers and data scientists might be working for banks in the City. They can look down from their tower offices and see Shoreditch and think, ‘Why am I up here being part of the corporate machine, when I could be down there helping to change the world?’ To start a business you also need access to venture capital an
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