Episode 1 Swansea Market

Built in the heart of the city,

Swansea Market is Wales's largest indoor market.

There you are. £16.82, that's fantastic.

Thank you very much indeed.

Every day,

more than 700 people compete alongside each other for business.

-Get your chestnuts and your satsumas!

-Cockles!

Come and get your fishies!

Their stalls will trade with their communities of modern Wales...

-£4.79. £4 to you.

-We'll think about it.

Leave it here first. We'll think about it.

..and service its oldest institutions.

First time I've ever shook hands with royalty.

In the grip of a recession, this is the one place where a small

idea can still turn into a big profit.

The total business turnover is forecast to be just over £5 million.

But the way we shop is changing.

City centres are losing business to large supermarkets and retail parks.

I have never seen it as tough as it is now.

You're destroying the livelihood of 700 people

if you destroy Swansea Market so how can it be right?

How can it be right for the country?

The market has to pull together as a unit, as a team, I guess.

Filmed over at the busiest period of the market's year...

Gotcha.

..this series explores the fortunes and fates of the city's

traders as they try and keep their business dreams alive.

Three minutes late. You know, Paul, it's not good enough, is it, son?

You have just got to pray that somebody wants what we have got,

basically. That's all we can do.

Well, look. Look at all these lovely, happy people.

You don't get that in Tesco's.

It's early November in Swansea.

For the last 800 years,

traders here have risen early to bring produce to the city centre,

hoping to earn a living from a day's business in the market.

Whilst the city has changed over the centuries, one tradition has

remained - it is always the fishmongers who arrive first.

Adrian Coakley-Greene's family have been supplying Swansea with

fish for over four generations.

These have come from down around the South, Newlyn.

That's some beautiful gear here. Our reputation is we buy quality fish.

Maybe a little more expensive but it is worth paying that little

bit extra to buy very good quality products.

Adrian is one of three fishmongers competing in the market.

Every day he battles to keep the customers buying from his stall.

Those are lovely fish, those.

Presentation is everything.

If it looks good, people will stop and say,

"Oh, that's a bit of a wow factor." We like that.

Look at those. As if they have been hand-dipped in a pot of red paint.

That is colour. That is colour. We like that. Again, colour.

A little bit of green. That is a wow-factor prawn.

That's the piece de resistance. Customers love to see that.

Adrian spends three hours each morning crafting his fish

so they stand out from his rivals.

I just look back at that there and say,

"Well, maybe this is even better than Harrods."

Swansea market is home to 103

of Britain's four million small businesses.

Some will work together

and some will compete fiercely against each other.

The success of each stall depends solely on the hard work

and ingenuity of the people running them.

You have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds setting up beautiful shops.

They are filled with many more hundreds of thousands of pounds'

worth of stock.

We have all come to the same place at the same time for the same

purpose - to try to earn a living.

Are we going to make £2 today?

Are we going to make £4,000 today? Who knows?

Until it happens, it is in the air.

TANNOY CHIMES

Good morning to all traders. Swansea market is now open.

Thank you.

In the next nine hours, over £30,000 will change hands,

4,000 Welsh cakes will be baked and 200 lamb chops sold.

Three metres of hair will be cut off and two metres sewn back on.

Yeah, that's a lot of better. Thank you.

The city's oldest pensioners will be served

alongside its youngest children.

Generations of stallholder will do business with generations

of customer as everyone tries to turn their product into profit.

-Come on. I don't care.

-Come on, come on.

-No, you come on. £2.

'Tempers flare because we are all under extreme pressure'

and people get, "Oh, my God! What's happening?

PHONE RINGS

"Why haven't we got that in?" You have let Mrs Jones down

and there's people here, "Where's my order? Where's my order?"

And, you know, you just can't cope with it all.

Afternoon. Coakley-Greene.

The backbone of the market

has historically been fresh local produce.

Alongside the fishmongers, there are seven cooked meat stalls,

three bakers and four greengrocers.

Is that one OK? Or I can pick some big ones out if you would rather.

No, that's all right.

Billy Upton's is one of four butchers in the market

and, like all the others, is a family business.

-Sausage?

-£6.93, so. £6.93, mate.

Pork steaks and two large sausage, four rib eyes

and three packs of gammon. That's number one.

Was there anything else you'd like today?

-No, that's all right, thank you.

-Lovely. Thank you very much.

34 years I have been in this market. I started...

Well, I started when I was younger than the boys over there.

Things were totally different then to what they are now.

We really had to work.

There you go. £10.99, please.

Out by the counter by there now,

we would have them four or five deep on a Saturday.

You didn't have time to cut it and make it look pretty.

You had to cut it, get it on the counter because people were

coming and taking, you know, taking piles of stuff.

There you are.

A lot of people in here made an awful lot of money.

But don't get me wrong, it wasn't money for nothing.

Everybody in here who earned money, earned money.

You had to work very, very hard for whatever you took.

The market has created many millionaires in Swansea.

Farmers, fishermen and food producers from across Wales

have all sold their wares under its roof,

making a tidy profit from customers who,

until recently, had little option but to shop in the city centre.

20 years ago, you wouldn't be standing here talking to me.

I'd be off. I'd be having a row off my old man for standing here

talking to you cos we should be serving, I don't know,

probably 15 customers that were waiting.

If you didn't shop at the market, you didn't eat,

you didn't have food on your plate. Everyone came in here.

But in recent decades,

large supermarkets have opened around Swansea, car parks

have been turned into offices and the High Street pedestrianised.

The food producers of Swansea Market have found themselves

isolated in the city centre.

If you look by here now, that used to be a car park.

The buses used to come round the corner by here,

drop off people at there, pick up people from there.

You would go round top of the market, round by there and people

would be dropped off, picked up from the market all the time.

That's what made the market very, very busy.

We have got the prices in the market to take care of everything

ourselves but it is just getting the people into the city -

that's what we need desperately.

The councilman tasked to deal with the traders' problems is

the market superintendent and rent collector John Burns.

'There has been markets in Swansea, I'm told,

'for about 800 years or so'

so this is how trade began and this is how trade continues.

It is great to still have individual stallholders in this day

and age - one-man bands -

and a completely different way of shopping to your, sort of,

you know, retail High Streets that all look the same, really.

Give me markets any day of the week.

Possibly an appointment at the weekend.

Or, yes, Mr Owens has been round to see me and he threatened me

with an axe if I don't pay up or something like that.

That's the method we are employing now. Wit and charm is gone.

It's an axe now.

Right, Cheers.

You have got to know how to keep the peace between people.

A lot of times, perhaps, traders get stirred up, you know,

'about silly little matters and its a matter of not overreacting,

'just sort of trying to find common ground between traders,

'trying to make sure that people move on.'

-I do beg your pardon. We are doing 500 in cash.

-500, yes.

-Yeah, sorry.

One of John's most important tasks is rent collection.

He will receive over a million pounds from the traders each year.

-There we are.

-You're an absolute gentleman.

-Thank you, John.

Thank you, sir, on behalf of the city and county of Swansea.

No comment.

These rents are a fraction of what people would

pay on the struggling High Street.

As Britain faces a triple dip recession,

the market is where many of the city's new businesses are heading.

It is one of the few places in Great Britain where you can still

get an opportunity to start a business for, like,

reasonably low rents, grow it from scratch

and hopefully it is going to be the start of something really big.

The market's newest business is opening today.

A big moment for its owner Emily Poole.

-That's it done, yeah?

-Yeah.

'Vegan chocolate is no dairy whatsoever.

'No cream or eggs or anything like that.'

All it is is just replacing the vegan cream for the dairy cream

and that was it.

Emily will be the proud owner of Chocoholics -

Swansea's first organic handmade chocolate shop

specialising in vegan confectionery.

'I saw a recipe in a vegan magazine for chocolate truffles so I decided'

to have a go because I was diagnosed, stupidly, 40% lactose intolerant.

So I can have dairy sometimes. Sometimes not.

'So I tried making vegan chocolate truffles and everyone liked them.'

Emily has given up her job

and invested all of her savings to get Chocoholics off the ground.

I'll be selling my own range of chocolate truffles.

There will be about 10-20 flavours of my own

and the rest of it will be chocolate boxes of different...

Not just truffles. All sorts of different chocolates in boxes.

All my ones, they're all made out of dark chocolate.

They're cherry blossom, rich cocoa.

Then we have got the white chocolate ones with cookie and cranberry

and white chocolate lemon and coconut ones.

And throughout the week there will be a lot more flavours added.

'I think the only worry is about the money factor.

'I think you get all the creativity that you want to be but it is just

'the worry that it might not make it in the proper

'business in the long run.'

The next six weeks will be vital to Emily

if Chocoholics is to be a success.

She is part of the changing face of the market as traders turn to

selling specialist products not found in large superstores.

Cobblers, hair extension stalls and old-fashioned sweetshops have also

emerged along with a stall almost entirely devoted to vacuum cleaners.

Vacuum cleaner belts, vacuum cleaner filters, Dyson filters,

washing machine belts, tumble dryer belts and cooker elements.

Even the famous cockle traders have decided to diversify.

Jellied eels. I think it is a London thing.

No, I've never tried one.

I do eat all shellfish but I have never tried a jellied eel.

It is not for me.

But, as the Christmas season approaches,

some stalls find themselves battling to keep their customers

and are having to throw everything at the business.

I'd probably begin by asking you when the big day is

because time has got a lot to do with it if we needed to order anything

in but I would also want to know what your colour theme is going to be.

David and Janet Court have run I Do Wedding Favours

for the last five years.

I have been married twice and so has David.

So, our wedding was our third marriage each.

When we first started this shop,

we had gone from a tiny little hovel, working on a table in a spare

room to having our own High Street presence in a city centre in Swansea.

-I mean, it's was absolutely wonderful, wasn't it?

-Yes.

I remember the very first person who came in bought some table confetti.

Two little packets for £1.50.

That was the first thing that went in the till.

-We thought we had struck gold, didn't we?

-It was wonderful.

-We went, "Yay!"

-We really thought we had done it, didn't we?

The first three years was just build, build, build.

It was absolutely wonderful.

But, over the last couple of years, commercially,

it has just gone down, down, down.

Inevitably, with petrol the price it is and, quite frankly, the weather as

it is today, people are going to want to stay in rather than go out

and if they can do their shopping at home and have things delivered,

so much the easier, cheaper, quicker.

David and Janet are fighting for survival against Internet shopping

and the rise of the superstores.

There's a lot of big shops doing little pieces of what I sell

and very, very cheap.

Like, you can buy a little box of confetti with a teddy bear on,

you know, and they are selling them for about 50p

and things like that and that affects the business.

I can't compete with the big boys

but they don't give the quality that I give.

Can you manage with that now? Is that all right?

For the market's most successful stalls,

trade is busiest around noon.

15,000 people will pass through the market every day.

-What about that?

-Two for a pound for that.

In recent years, stalls have been joined by cafes

to feed the appetites of hungry shoppers.

Sandy's Lunchbox is the market's newest attraction.

We inherited the business as Chez Nous which,

in French, I think, means little house or little home.

And I thought, "Well, I haven't got any French roots,"

and we had a lunchtime trade and I thought, "Sandy's Lunchbox."

It just couldn't be Rob's Lunchbox for obvious reasons.

It had to be Sandy's Lunchbox.

For Sandy Ellis and her boyfriend Rob, this cafe was

part of a new chapter in both of their lives.

'We met online and I know people say about dating sites

'they don't work and all this and all that.'

I had been on quite a lot of dates before Rob and some of them

appeared in front of me

and I thought, "My word, that doesn't look anything like your picture."

Since getting together,

Rob has invested his entire pension in Sandy's Lunchbox.

This Christmas will be the first real test for the business.

We need to take around 6-700 a day. Yes. That's what we need.

We don't always take that much money.

I mean, you know, but that's what we need.

Sandy and Rob serve a daily carvery...

Two turkey dinners, two teas, table six.

..offering a choice of eight types of vegetable, four types of meat

and a cup of gravy, all for £4.50.

I love Jamie Oliver's style.

I like the fact of all the family around the table

and it is not all this fancy food, just piled on top of each other.

Even though I can cook that,

I'm more happy when we have a big plate or a big tray of something

and in two minutes later, it's all gone.

You know?

Sandy's cooking has created a loyal fan club who have followed

her for years to the different cafes she has worked in.

What you pay for this dinner here, you will pay twice somewhere else.

It's cooked fresh every day.

She does a lot of it at home and brings it here.

That's the passion she has for this place,

the passion she has for food and, of course, because of her passion,

we like to come here to support her as well, you see? There you go.

But the market is a competitive place and Sandy is in a constant

battle to keep her customers from straying to pastures new.

I want two teas for the ladies over there and a coffee for me.

-Is that too difficult?

-No, no, that's fine.

-Get on with it.

Oh, he's a right softy.

When we bought him a hamper last Christmas, he burst into tears.

No, I didn't. Don't say lies.

SHE LAUGHS

She's a lying bitch.

'You have got to know how to treat people in a different way.

'It is knowing your customer, knowing how to treat them'

and just, you know, respecting them in the way that they respect you.

I don't mind that Mario swears in front of me. I don't mind. You know?

In tight economic times, a trader's charm can mean

the difference between success and failure.

Are you after anything in particular?

This is a good one. Something like that, only smaller, please.

-That's the size that... Is it the bag you want?

-Yes, the bag.

Yes, of course. Over there. Yeah.

You have to listen. Otherwise you won't to know what they want.

If you don't agree with somebody, you have to sometimes try

and up the game a little bit by just giving a few gentle suggestions.

What about pearl spray like that? Pearl strands.

-No, these women are sporty women.

-Little golf balls? Hail?

I have to be everything to everybody. That's my job.

And anybody's job that works in a shop.

You don't show anything at all. You never grimace.

And then when they go out of the shop

then you kick the door in or you scream or punch the husband or...

Cos some of them, honestly, they haven't got a clue,

they really haven't.

But, you know, as long as they get out of here happy,

that's all I'm concerned about.

Would you like to try some chocolate?

For Emily Poole's Chocoholic shop, keeping customers is

less of a priority than finding some in the first place.

-Would you like a chocolate sample?

-Oh.

They are cherry truffle ones and they are Belgian white chocolate

-and milk chocolate.

-Oh, thank you very much. Thank you.

There is a stall right behind the engraving centre there,

in the corner. Chocoholics.

-OK.

-Thank you very much. I just had a piece.

-Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

'Once I get into the swing of things, I end up asking loads'

and loads of people if they would like a sample of it

and just hand out leaflets and things like that.

It is just the initial first couple of minutes that I get a bit shy with.

Would you like a chocolate sample?

They're white Belgian chocolate there

-and that is a dark cherry truffle there.

-That's nice.

-There is 14 flavours to choose from.

-That one is lovely, that is.

Having spent ten years working in an office,

this is Emily's first experience of market life.

I find it is best, normally, to keep in the background and then

if people are looking, just ask, "Do you need any help?"

But sometimes, even if I am just standing up or sitting down

and I look up, a lot of people see you even looking and they just go.

But then other times, people like to be spoken to

so most of the time I have learnt

just to try to stay in the background.

If Emily needed a model of how to grow her business then

she need only look to the other end of the market.

Hiya, you all right?

In 2011, Peter Middleton changed his jewellery stall

into a gold buying shop.

Within two years,

he has become Wales's largest independent gold dealer.

The first thing we have got to do

is separate what is gold and what isn't.

'Teeth is quite popular.'

You get quite a few teeth with the tooth still in,

which my wife is particularly un-fond of. But, you know, gold is gold.

It can be surprisingly high in value.

Some of the silver objects that come in are quite

incredible in their craftsmanship and you feel, "Oh, you can't scrap

"that off for the value you're going to get."

But scrap it he does. In the last year,

Peter's turnover has jumped from £700,000 to five million.

-All right, so, altogether we have got £355.

-Is it? Never. My God.

I got the shock of my life.

-Oh, lovely.

-That's not bad, is it?

-Excellent.

'It's not dishonest or illegal in any way.'

I mean, if you have got something to sell, somebody has got the right to

offer you whatever they want and it is up to you to accept that or not.

Thank you very much. Excellent.

Some of my customers, if they're feeling a bit reluctant

about selling, with the money or part of the money,

they can buy a nice picture frame and get a nice picture made up of

that person or whatever and the rest of the money, they can go on holiday.

You'll be pleased to know it's probably more than you paid for it.

-£170 cash.

-Take it quick. Have it.

-Sold.

-Yeah?

With the price of gold having quadrupled in the last five years,

Peter is fast becoming the market's wealthiest trader.

Being a millionaire is a bare requirement in about ten years'

time so if I can have £5 million in liquid assets

on my 50th birthday which is 25 May 2018 then

I should have enough money to live off for the rest of my life.

Stalls such as Peter's are attractive not just to customers.

In times of recession, security is a constant concern in the market and

sometimes the problems of the city bring in a very different clientele.

I caught you...

-No, you went like that, "Get out."

-Get out.

If you'd said please, I would have gone.

Eric Toms is head of the market security team tasked with

-keeping produce in the market and troublemakers out.

-Am I all right?

Now you're OK. Thank you very much.

RADIO CRACKLES

I'm 54 this year.

I'm five foot seven and a half - that half is important - and I

worked in the steelworks for 32 years before I became a security guard.

Every day I come in this market,

I just don't know what is going to happen next. You can have...

Like I say, you can have a famous person walking through here.

Famous rugby players. Yesterday Mr Colin Charvis was in here.

96 caps for Wales. Should have had 100 as far as I'm concerned.

The next minute,

I can be dealing with somebody that's either a petty crime theft or

I can have a drug addict that's walking round and abusing people.

You just don't know. The diversity of the job is what I like about it.

About 100,000 people a week come through the market.

Not all of them are here to do their shopping.

Some of them, like every other city, are here to see

if they can shop without paying.

Having only been in the market for four months,

this will be Eric's first Christmas season.

-Hang on. WOMAN:

-Grab him.

-What has he done?

-I followed him out there.

-No, no.

That woman there.

A handbag thief has been caught in the market.

Did he try to get your bag off you? Yes. Can you stay there?

Yeah, don't worry about that. Stay there until I get back, yeah?

This is what we know so far.

Two members of the public followed you into the market

when you're following that lady. They followed you.

These are independent witnesses we are talking about now.

They watched you follow that lady in.

They saw you attempt to grab her bag and she pulled it back off you.

And another member of the public, totally independent again,

-saw you do exactly the same when you're in here.

-No.

So, on that basis, we are going to phone the police

and get the police here.

Eric's security team have got their first arrest

of the Christmas season.

I don't think any thief likes any form of security.

They are usually opportunists in here

and any choice or any quick theft they can make, they will do it.

With the market, they tend to think, for some reason,

that because it is a market we haven't got

the security like you would have in Boots and Tesco's

and the rest of it but that's where they're wrong.

By late afternoon, trade in the market is quietening down.

Many stallholders will have been on their feet since before dawn.

£8.55. Thank you very much. Thank you.

If you want to have a good, successful business,

you get up at quarter to four in the morning and you come into the market

and you don't go from here until gone five in the night.

If you don't want a successful business,

come in at ten and go at three. That is the difference.

'It is ten past four now'

and our day started at quarter to six this morning

and it is by no means over.

You know, we go straight from here now either to

the cash and carry or to the supermarket and last night

we actually didn't arrive home in the house until nine o'clock.

TANNOY CHIMES

May I have your attention, please? Swansea Market is now closing.

Thank you and have a pleasant evening.

If you can take the emotional roller coaster,

work endlessly, think very hard and keep on and on and on,

putting the business before yourself and your relationship

or your family even sometimes, you will make a working business.

It is a business model that creates profits even in a recession.

Next time at Swansea market,

the traders get ready for the busy festive season...

It's two turkey dinner, no piggy blanket and a glass of water, yeah?

Please, yeah.

..Christmas shoppers descend on the city centre...

Cockles, coat, sweets for the kids and an onion bhaji.

..and another new business tries to

take advantage of the Christmas rush.

So are you going to come to the stall?

-Cos you are two good-looking women, like.

-Thank you.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd