1. You too can work for London Fashion Exchange!

The screen at the bottom of the page is of the London Fashion Exchange's advert posted on to Gumtree.com and possibly still available online now. Upon applying for the job, candidates are invariably invited to interview. I mailed the company a variety of fake CVs of an increasingly abysmal standard. Each semi-literate CV and covering letter led to an invitation to interview.

Interviews are carried out by either Roland Tilman himself or a man called 'Trey' (and possibly others) in temporarily rented office space on either the 5th floor of Tower 42, Old Broad Street, or the 29th floor of One Canada Square, Canary Wharf.

During interview, candidates are offered a job on condition they pay 85 GBP up front for marketing training. Roland Tilman claims that the training course was deigned by Jordan Belfort  (the 'Wolf of Wall Street' and a notorious fraudster) at considerable cost and is available at a reduced rate owing to the large numbers of people the London Fashion Exchange is currently recruiting and training.

Training takes place at a different location. Recently it has been taking place at the Croydon Park Hotel. Roland Tilman presents the training seminar, claiming that the 'professional trainer' is ill. Training seminars for London Fashion Exchange usually have a group-size of thirty to forty trainees. They are timetabled to last three to four hours. One hour is spent on introductions and icebreakers. Following this, Roland Tilman explains the background of the company and reveals what tasks his new 'market researchers' will be carrying out for him.

The London Fashion Exchange, so Tilman claims, is one of the biggest importers of human hair into the UK. This allows the company to sell hair extensions at fantastically cheap prices (more on this later). Tilman's trainees need to hit the street and collect forty names and contact details of people who may be interested in the company's products. If this proves too difficult, Tilman says that forty names and contact details of people looking for part time work will also suffice.This is obviously a much easier task.

The people who give their details on the street are later contacted by London Fashion Exchange and invited to interview - and then invited to training - and...well, you get the idea.

Trainees are told that after they work for one month they will get paid (30GBP per 5-hour shift/forty names). They are then eligible to become freelance distributors for the company. This means they can buy hair extensions at wholesale price and make 30 GBP minimum profit on each sale. They are encouraged to make contact with hair salons and secure regular customers and promised potential income of upwards of 20,000 GBP per year for only a few hours work a week.

Tilman claims there are other branches of the company (toys, gadgets, electronics) and distributors are entitled to buy individual smart phone or laptop units at hugely reduced wholesale prices. 

No training of any worth takes place. Instead trainees are told to practise reading from a script in order to learn how to stop people on the street.  

"Hello, I'm presently working for the London Fashion Exchange and I'd like to ask you a  few questions, Madam...."

A trainee claimed to me that during her 'training' Tilman brought out a woman from New Zealand who has worked for the company for "six weeks". The trainees were told that she had already had three promotions, and that she was a marketing talent of such monumental savvy that she is able to acquire the contact details of 40 strangers in under an hour, and has recently been headhunted by a huge marketing company.

When questioned about the timeframe of her three promotions in six week, the titles of her jobs, and the name of the company that had 'head hunted' her, the woman and Roland Tilman admitted that they had not been telling the truth.