This is The Business Village People Podcast. Hello, I'm David Markwell, and welcome to the latest edition of the Business Village People podcast. If you've missed any of our other episodes, all you have to do is to search for us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or from wherever you get your podcasts from.

And when you find us subscribe, that way you'll never miss another episode. Thank you so much for all the feedback and kind words regarding the interview on the last podcast with Sam. If you've not heard it, please have a listen back. This podcast is about the people, the villagers, and the services available at the Business Village here in Barley, South Yorkshire.

Our aim is simple to be informative, entertaining, showcase success, and promoting collaboration. Okay, let's go. In this episode of Business Village People, we meet a frustrated actor who last appeared on television rolling in black bin liners full of Turkey giblets with Sir David Jason. And that wasn't even part of the storyline.

Plus, it's Goodbye, net zero Accelerator, and hello, net zero Barnsley, which is here to provide the town with more help and support to businesses wanting to achieve those net zero goals.

This is the Business Village People podcast. First up, let's meet Alex Hollingworth. His life was heading down a path to academic studies and university without really knowing what he wanted to do professionally. All that changed. After he received a Christmas present from his parents, so when I was 15 and I got a camera for Christmas and did some workshops on how to use it, use the manual settings to edit the photos, and as a family, we sort of took a lot of trips away.

So we'd go on these trips, I'd take my camera. And get all the photos that I could try to sort of sharpen the saw as it were. 'cause it was like a, a bit of a hobby for me. Mm-hmm. Something that I could do day to day. And I started posting them to Instagram. I have a bit of a gallery there to see how I'd come on from the first sort of set of images that I took to the last and I had improved, how the skills had come along and what I was doing differently.

The photographer that I did the workshops with took notice. Of these pictures on Instagram, they sort of said, do you want to come to do some work experience? And at the time I was going on more of an academic path. I was going to do a levels, uh, history, politics, and economics. It's a fearsome combination.

That's a minute really, isn't it? That. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I thought it's, it is just another skill, isn't it? It's just something else to put on the CV, I suppose, and, uh, something that I can see if I enjoy. And do you regret not doing the A Levels? Not really, because I think at the time it was like the done thing when you were in school.

I suppose that's what they're trying to, uh, maneuver you towards because you know, if, if you, if you stay in education, then you sort of work it out as you go along. But realistically, The path that I was going to take, I still do not know to this day what I would've done with it. It would might have been going into teaching or whatever.

I say I specialize in commercial, but it is quite a broad field, so it under that umbrella, you can have architecture, food, product, personal branding, fashion, editorial. These are all things that I cover, and generally, they are all to be used in a commercial sense. That's sort of where the name I think it comes from.

Anyway, I would, I would say so I do a lot of product work. And that stems from during the pandemic. Obviously, we had restrictions on seeing other people even in workplaces and things like that. So I sort of pivoted the business as it were, just to do products because they could be sent in the post and then I could photograph them with a brief and obviously liaise with a client on Zoom or Teams or whatever platform photograph products, send them back in the post.

And it was sort of like a production line of product shoots, which is a system to be fair, that I've even kept to. To today because it allowed me when I started off to gather clients from across the UK. Not just in this area, which I think helped out as well, helped sort of spread the word a little bit wider.

Do you get to keep the samples that they send you? Occasionally, yes, occasionally I do. But um, a lot of the ones that I keep are probably not for my use. Like fake tan and, well, I could save you a fortune at Christmas and birthdays. Do you know what I have thought of that? But, um, when, when I speak to clients and they say, what do you do with those leftover products?

I say, well, that's, you know, happy birthday Mum. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So some, sometimes if I go for a meeting with a, with a client or something, you can take a few bottles of fake time, know I need to get rid of it somehow. I've got sort of a broad, diverse range of clients. So I've got, you know, clients that are big and small in all different industries, in, you know, different positions or should I say different, uh, points in the journey.

There's a lot of SMEs, but then I've, I've worked with companies such as C World, uh, the Botanist, Sam Maritz. Uh, we've done work that's appeared in boats, Superdrug, cosmopolitan Magazine, things like that. But at the same time, a lot of the shoots that we've had recently have been some of our s m E clients who are amazing.

And the thing with the SMEs is it's a fantastic feeling to create really great, great photography for them because you can make 'em look like one of these powerhouses. There's never a feeling for these clients that. Um, the photography work isn't absolutely on par with some of the, you know, big multinationals that you see on things like books or Superdrug.

So, for example, an SS m e client of mine, they are retailed by River Island and the shots that we've done for them, they look right at home amongst all of those, you know, massive established companies as well. And it's. It's amazing to see how the client grows with the photography that they use and how they're sort of maneuvering themselves on their journey and sort of how I, as a photographer can have a hand in that.

It's, it's very satisfying. The plans for the future are at the moment. Of course, I am. I. Just a one-man band, but very, very soon I can see more photographers working at Alex alumni photography and assistants and things like that. The vision really for five years is to have almost a one-stop shopper, a visual agency as it were, where a client, again, big or small, any sort of company can come to us and have all of their visual assets produced in-house by Alexander Photography, whether that's, um, photography, video, graphic design, anything.

Work, there'll be teams of editors, retouchers, photographers, set builders, uh, and it'll all be produced under one roof. Podcast producers, potentially, potentially. I'm always on the lookout, so of course, I'm based here at the Business Village. I can be contacted through social media mainly. Uh, my website, alex hallworth.co.

Ok, or by email at Alex at Alex. Never miss an episode of The Business Village People Podcast. Simply subscribe and follow from wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Exciting news for businesses looking to reduce their carbon emissions. Net zero Barnsley has landed. Will be talking more about that in future episodes of the podcast, but you can find out a little bit more by visiting net zero barnsley dot.

Co Uk,

but what about the Net Zero Accelerator program? Well, one business that took part in that program was Glass Onion, the UK's leading vintage clothing company that processes up to 20,000 kilograms of secondhand clothing every single week at their headquarters in doth and get this. Every item had been thrown away or was destined for landfill.

Michael Greenwood has produced this report. My name's John Hicklin and I'm the founding director of a company in Barnsley South. The auction called the Glasson Vintage, and we're a retailer and wholesaler of vintage fashion. So I started the business when I was at, at university in, uh, the early two thousand.

And what I'd do is I'd travel around charity shops in Sheffield. Collecting vintage clothing and then selling that on eBay. Then just to earn a bit of extra cash on the side, we then decided to, um, start doing markets. 'cause we thought there's, there's something in this, in this business. So we, we painted out my grandma's coal shed and we use that as a space base.

From there, we take the stock and we go and do market. And, and trade on, on eBay. And around that time I thought it was a real opportunity to like build a, build a career out of it. So we set out then to, to build glass onion and we're here today, then we are a team of, uh, 62 people and we sort and grade 20,000 kilos a week.

Vintage clothing, and we've developed a sewing factory on site, which produces over 12,000 pieces per month for the High Street, and it's all remaking and re remanufacturing. Old clothing used clothing. My vision for Glass Onion is to be the go-to. A retailer for responsible fashion. So we want to recycle and remanufacture exciting products for us customers who are aged between 18 and 30.

Generally. Responsible. Fashion for me is thinking more about your purchases and thinking about the environmental and social impact that, that each purchase has. So it's like, where, where are the, where's your clothing made? How is it made, and what materials is it using? And what's gonna happen to that product after it's being made and manufactured?

So, responsible fashion for me is just taking responsibility for the, the clothing that we buy because it's, it's really difficult for people to be completely. Sustainable when it comes to fashion. 'cause fashion by its very