There are retailers and then there are retailers. Go2Games in Croydon is the latter.

Surrounded by a diminishing high street and huge pressures on independent businesses, the south London video games vendors are trying to do things differently.

That might mean raising thousands for local and international charities and causes, which Go2Games seemingly do as a matter of course.

More recently it also means expanding their offering to focus on empowering and educating youngsters who might otherwise miss out on opportunities later in life.

It is clear that Craig, Josh, Niro, and the rest of the team behind the video games retailers want do something bigger than just make money.

"A lot of the ways in which a normal retailer would work in this situation is to go down the route of trying to sell everything or anything to survive...just trying to make a buck basically. But we wanted to try and stay focused," Director Craig told the Croydon Guardian.

Your Local Guardian: Director Craig of Go2Games. Director Craig of Go2Games.

"We're born and bread Croydon, we've got a lot of energy, and we appreciate the uniqueness of Croydon and the size of it. I've spoken before about the term 'legacy' and that's what we're trying to work towards. We want to create a retail-learning environment...a rounded model that isn't purely focused on hoping people buy video games," he said.

To that end Go2Games want to transcend profit making uber alles and are pursuing various ways of doing that.

One of those is teaming up with existing grassroots initiatives like Fashion Meets Music in the Centrale Shopping Centre in a display of small business solidarity, as Executive Director Josh described:

"Fashion Meets Music is a social enterprise. The concept is that they offer a marketplace experience for grassroots fashionistas. People or brands from the area or elsewhere who have never been given a platform to be able to boost their brand out into the world, from events to catwalks to shows, they are offered the whole experience to do that.

"They approached us with a space that requires filling, and asked us if we wanted to collaborate so now it's become Fashion Meets Music Meets Gaming. We've got quite a good social media presence and we've got that physical space now it's growing into a hub in the community and even more, creating an educational arm," he described.

Josh is a former south London secondary school teacher who is channelling some of the lessons he himself learned in that job into his new role with Go2Games.

"Over the 10 years I was in teaching one of the real things I realised was missing was for those students who might not be solely academic. What do they have? What are they going to do? They can become the forgotten generation. They are just passed through the system and then are told 'alright, go and do what you need to do.' I was told for example that there are over 4,500 young people on benefits in Croydon at the moment," he said.

So how can a video game retailer help combat generational inequality that's so evident in Croydon?

"Our concept is we run a number of programs including a trainee, two-week employability program that includes transferable skills so that's content creation, social media, administration and retail.

"We also have 14 Kick Starters who were on Universal Credit but have now got roles as Content Creators, Post-production team, retail, customer service. There's an amazing amount of people who are out of work and we want to give these people a chance to improve themselves and give them a chance to move on in life," Josh described.

Go2Games vision might seem idealistic, but the positive impact of projects like these training schemes can have is clear.

They signal a wider shift echoed in a number of other very successful, more ethically-minded businesses from Lush to Patagonia.

"We're all bread as capitalists to be pushing towards growth and growth, but there's a shift going on," Craig said, chiming with innumerable, notable economists and scientists who have being saying much the same thing lately.

The future beckons.