If there’s anything that characterises the centre of Manchester, besides the almost insane variety for shopping, it’s the cabs that buzz around before being hailed down and boarded by a rushing passenger. But as fewer and fewer of us hail cabs on the222 street, Uber drivers have experienced a bit of a boom. It’s the sheer convenience of it all, no need to rely on luck to find a taxi willing to go to your destination, or spend ridiculous amounts of money on a 10 minute ride.
Uber has its problems, as do most ‘gig economy’ companies, but they’re a great way to employ people left behind in traditional employment. Manchester is an economic powerhouse but that doesn’t mean everyone and their mum has a job, quite the opposite really. Gig companies provide an excellent outlet to give people a chance to employ themselves, all while giving them the flexibility that is so rare with mainstream jobs. Whether it retirees looking for a bit of a cushion on their pension, young people looking for beer money or women from conservative families that want to support their own lifestyle while putting themselves through university. Weirdly specific? Meet Aisha Hussein.
All families are a bit dysfunctional, at least that’s what Aisha told herself. But not all families prevent their daughters from getting jobs, nor going to a university outside their home town, nor doing anything that ‘should’ be considered normal in Manchester.
It always takes time to realise that there are faults in the people we love. There are two choices when that realisation hits. People aren’t inherently rational, unless they’re willing to change something about them, they won’t. The choices are resentment, and acceptance but a willingness to choose your own path. There’s only one option Aisha was likely to choose.
So here she was. Largely estranged from her family, with a car and student accommodation all she had as what could graciously be called assets. A car might be a strange thing for a student to have in a big city, but Aisha loved the independence it gave her. Driving mates to and from university, taking 3 am car rides in the rainswept streets, and now providing her livelihood.
Living away from her parents was exhilarating for Aisha. But like every decision, it had its consequences. The tradeoff was financial support and comfort for her mental health and independence. With her parents’ all encompassing hand not over her head, she had to face the rain alone — but she could bask in the sunshine of her own choices.
Not many university students own cars, let alone a huge, estate vehicle. Aisha would’ve preferred a sleeker one with a carbon footprint smaller than that of a blue whale, but the estate was on sale. Too good an opportunity to pass up surely. Who’d have thought a car with a dodgy paint job and faded grille was to be her saviour.
After what could be charitably described as the final ‘falling out’ with her parents, Aisha turned to full time Uber driving. Well as full time as one can get with professors hounding her for work and friends hounding her for drinks. A girl with a scarf driving an estate got some funny looks, even in Manchester. But all you need an Uber to do is ferry you from one spot to the other in (relative) comfort, so the driver doesn’t entirely matter. Until they start asking for drunken relationship advice, an area in which Aisha rather excelled.
It was one of these drunken chats that set her off on a path away from the grind of Uber, and the mishmash of personal pickups she’d done for little more than a pittance. She survived, yes, but she wanted to love. What’s life without a weighted blanket and mood lighting?
This particular drunken passenger was middle aged, a far cry from the university students that she picked up from seedy establishments after midnight. She seemed well dressed, which is either a good sign or a massive red flag depending on which area of town she works in.
Aisha was already stressed about the pandemic (people don’t seem to need taxis when there’s nowhere to go) when the woman slumped into the back seat.
She was hugging a box and kept rambling on about something called “Dropship” and how she’s going to be rich before “they know it”. Not exactly the finest of wisdom. A woman to woman chat and plenty of belly laughing later, Aisha had a plan. Sometimes help comes from the most unexpected of places. And people.
Drunken chats aren’t the most reliable of sources to form an impression of something, so Aisha decided to do her own research. Finding time between classes, friends and the few Uber passengers she got, she looked up and waded through the masses of information online about dropship. Information is inherently unreliable but for a mass communications student, it wasn’t difficult to sieve the dodgy information from the real gems.
In her late night researching powered by an unhealthy amount of coffee, she realised that proper solid wood furniture was the one thing missing from the catalogues of dropshippers online. For good reason: it’s expensive. But she had a plan — target the smallest, most popular pieces first and scale up as she gets some sort of capital flow going. Not bad for a communications major. But intelligence isn’t linear after all.
Huddled up in her car between rides, with just the soft purr of her engine for company, she set up a few dropship accounts and sent a few emails to companies she found reliable. After an online degree that had been about 80% emails and powerpoints, this was child’s play. But that didn’t mean it was any less tedious. She’d learnt enough to know that an efficient dropshipper removes half the stress of running this type of business; it’s worth investing time and energy finding the right one. Even if it means you need to live on coffee for a few nights.
There was one problem, though. Dropship was expensive, even if it was less so than proper wholesaling. Then again, everything was expensive for a uni student surviving on ramen and coffee 6 days a week. Aisha decided the way out was to cut as many costs as she could before launching, so she wasn’t in the hole before she even started. The answer came in the form of something called “click and collect”.
It’s exactly what is says on the tin. You click (and order) the products that your customers buy from you and collect them from the warehouse of your dropshipper. She found one just outside the Manchester city limits, as close to the city centre as a warehouse had any right to be. This would cut out delivery costs and give her more control over delivery times. A win win for everyone, except her back that was about to be hunched over a steering wheel for a rather uncomfortable amount of time. She even found past the 10 piece minimum order per lot by focussing on accessories and smaller furniture — this is the innovation that should be inspiring to budding dropshippers.
Being a uni student has it’s perks. Aisha enlisted the help of some of her friends who were small scale influencers online, paying them with hard cash or a takeout meal to advertise her products. Setting up a website was simple, she just found one of the basic WordPress pages with a promise to upgrade it later. E-commerce platform accounts were her bread and butter after all. She also took the time created all the relevant social media pages — pushing her products with all the enthusiasm of someone who’s livelihood depends on this.
Marketing, marketing, marketing. That’s what they taught her in her mass communications degree. She had no idea any of it would be useful before she was even out of university, or indeed at all. She made her friends model with the products with varying degree of success, knowing that people like associating products with a human face. She even went the old fashioned way and plastered photos across the campus and the city. Just enough to catch people’s attention without being annoying.
Aisha already knew how to navigate the streets with ease; she just had to be extra careful with products in her boot. She settled into a routine, classes in the morning then a bit of marketing and coordination at lunch. Picking up a sub from her local sandwich shop (chicken meaballs with extra olives and turkey slices. No ham, thank you) and delivering her day’s goods while eating lunch and playing Lorde on repeat. Socialising time in the evening, and rinse and repeat.
She ends the day with her list of goals. Quitting university if her work gets profitable enough, moving away from click and collect when more worldwide customers start ordering, getting a new car. She’d already crossed two smaller goals off the list. A weighted blanket and moonlights feel so much sweeter when you’ve bought them yourself.