Small-scale retailers and refugee travelling vendors

Many urban refugees turned to retail trade in order to secure a livelihood. For decades after the arrival of the Asia Minor refugees in Greece, travelling vendors carrying their wares on carts or trolleys and setting up makeshift stalls in neighbourhood streets and thoroughfares were common sights in the refugee settlements and these images have been imprinted in the collective memory of the people who grew up in refugee neighbourhoods. Some of these travelling vendors would later manage to find a home for their businesses, opening shops in the settlement. Other, mostly small-scale, businesses, such as bakeries, tailor shops, coffee shops, pastry shops etc., were also established in the city by refugees who were either using their own capital or utilising the compensations and credit offered by the Greek state through the National Bank. Some of these business ventures not only succeeded, but evolved into profitable, long-standing companies with a strong presence in the local market, passing from generation to generation and establishing business traditions.

Historiography has accurately analysed the reasons why a large proportion of the refugees who arrived in Greece in the 1920s went into retail trade and became active in the tertiary sector. In the absence of concrete state policies, this trend must have been a spontaneous phenomenon, the result of choices driven both by the refugees’ previous work experience and the fact that the capital requirements for entry in several commercial sectors were particularly low. Therefore, it is no accident that trade attracted refugees from both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum: on the one hand, affluent individuals, who not only had the necessary funds at their disposal, but also access to bank credit and business networks, and on the other, destitute people who would simply set up makeshift stalls on main street. This contrast attests to the fact that the refugee population was not a homogeneous social entity, but was characterised by internal differentiations and disparities stemming from economic, social and cultural factors which determined the refugees’ employment decisions in the places where they settled.

Images of street vendors like the ones described earlier were an essential part of Volos’ refugee identity. Immortalised by the camera lens, these images have been ingrained in the memories of all the people who grew up in these neighbourhoods, even if they were third-generation refugees. Vendors carrying improvised carts would wander the neighbourhoods selling fish, vegetables, mastic, candy, bread rolls, but also socks, hair pins and anything else that might provide a living income. Prodromos Christoforidis, a third-generation refugee who was born and raised in the Iolkos settlement during the 1960s and ‘70s, remembers the most distinctive figure in the Iolkos settlement: Uncle Andreas, the mastic seller.

 ‘Uncle Andreas was a first-generation refugee who had two main jobs: he was a fisherman when there was fish, and a mastic seller when there wasn’t […] He used to wear rubber shoes, grey, striped pants made of a thick fabric, a belt and a jacket on top. When he was selling fish, he carried two wicker baskets around the neighbourhoods […] he spoke the type of Greek the refugees used to speak […] when there was no fish he sold mastic […] he would go everywhere on foot’.

Prodromos Christoforidis also recalls other travelling vendors and the small shops, such as greengroceries, bakeries, barber shops, coffee shops, etc., which were opened by refugees in the Iolkos settlement and operated in the area for decades.

‘Besides the mastic seller, there was Uncle Kostas who sold candy apples, honey sweets and ice cream cones and cups in the summer […] There were also two refugee junk collectors, Prodromos Seisoglou and Abarik […] The junk collectors had a small cart drawn by a mule and they would pass through the neighbourhood shouting, ‘Junk collector! Junk collector! I buy old stuff!’ […] they would take things that were made of metal, like bronze and iron, and sell them on to some dealer […] All the greengrocers would make the so-called ‘rounds’…they would leave their wives in charge of the shop, take their horse cart, load it with vegetables and travel around their turf, as they had informally divided the area among themselves […] they would sell in the neighbourhoods that had no greengroceries. There were also mattress repairers… They all came from Misti, a Greek-speaking village in Cappadocia […] The mattress repairer would come to your yard, take out your mattress and open it up. They used a tool that looked like a long stick to tease the cotton and make it fluffy. When they were done, they would sew the mattress back together again and it was good as new… We also had a lot of lottery ticket sellers here in Agios Vasileios […] All these vendors and craftsmen worked on the streets […] There were also two shops selling buttons, threads, and bobbins; the one in our area was owned by Minas and Madame Chrysoula. They had turned part of their house into a shop with shelves on the wall […] The two ice sellers were refugees, Okaoglou and Sarikizoglou […] They had a large ice box where they would put ice slabs measuring between 80 cm and one metre, then cut them in four […] They loaded them on a cart drawn by a bicycle and the iceman used a large hook to grab the ice block and leave it outside the home. People would put it in their ice box and it would last two or three days […] They were from Cappadocia […] The greengrocer, Cheimonidis from Nikomideia, kept two sets of books, one was real and the other ‘cooked’ […] There were three or four bakeries in the area […] The men would gather in the coffee shops where they would play cards and backgammon. A little further away you could find Apostolis’ tavern and across from it a disreputable coffee shop where you could seemen smoking weed […] it was that kind of place. Peristera, the daughter of Serafeidis from Nikomideia, had another coffee shop and next to it, the other Serafeidis had a greengrocer/coffee shop which was still open until recently […] and we had two barbers, Giannis and Makis […]’