His name is Richard Charles Nicholas Branson. Born on July 18, 1950, he is a British business magnate, best known for his Virgin brand of over 360 companies. Branson's first successful business venture was at age 16 when he published a magazine called Student. He then set up an alt audio record mail-order business in 1970. Two years after, he opened a chain of record stores Virgin Records, later known as Virgin Megastores, and rebranded as Zavvi in late 2007.
With his flamboyant and competitive style,
Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s as he set up Virgin
Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label. Richard Branson
is the 236th richest person according to Forbes' 2008 list of billionaires,
with an estimated net worth of approximately $4.4 billion. Branson opened up on
his childhood, business ventures, and secrets of his success.
Virgin Group
Virgin, a leading branded venture capital
organisation, is one of the world's most recognised and respected brands. It was
conceived in 1970 by me. The Virgin Group has gone on to grow very successful
businesses in sectors ranging from mobile telephony to transportation, travel,
financial services, leisure, music, holidays, publishing, and retailing.
When we start a new venture, we base it on
hard research and analysis. Typically, we review the industry and put ourselves
in the customer's shoes to see what could make it better. We ask fundamental
questions like "Is this an opportunity for restructuring a market and
creating a competitive advantage?
What are the competitors doing? Is the
customer confused or badly served? Is this an opportunity for building the
Virgin brand? Can we add value? Will it interact with our other businesses? Is
there an appropriate trade-off between risk and reward?" Virgin Group Ltd
is a branded venture capital conglomerate of separately run companies that each
uses the Virgin brand of Richard Branson.
The core business areas are travel,
entertainment, and lifestyle, among others. Virgin Group's date of incorporation
is listed as 1989 by Companies House, which class it as a holding company;
however, Virgin's business and trading activities date to the 1970s. The net
worth of Virgin Group Ltd as of September 2008 is £5,010,000,000.
I retain complete ownership and control of
the Virgin brand. The group is sometimes perceived as a conglomerate, in fact, the case. Each of the companies Operating under the Virgin brand are separate
entities, with some being wholly owned by me, while I hold minority or majority
stakes in others. At times, I may simply license any of the brands to a company
that has purchased a division from me. A good instance is the likes of Virgin
Mobile USA, Virgin Mobile Australia, Virgin Radio (now part of TIML Golden
Square plc), and Virgin Music (now part of EMI). With a few exceptions, all of
the companies began as wholly owned Virgin subsidiaries.
The brand name "Virgin" arose when my partner and I were starting our first business- a record shop. We considered ourselves virgins in business. The Virgin logo was originally sketched on a paper napkin and remains largely unchanged from the original style used. Virgin Group operates like an eclectic venture-capital firm.
I have majority stakes in 224 companies, each
of which has its own CEO and board of directors. Each board includes at least
one member from Branson's seven-man advisory council, a team of bankers,
strategists, and accountants who are more or less in constant touch. Each
company also has its own set of outside investors and/or joint-venture partners
(Singapore Airlines owns about half of Virgin Atlantic; Sprint owns about half
of the U.S. cellular business).
Family background
I come from
a line of lawyers. My father was a barrister in the English legal system. I was
probably the first in a number of generations not to go into law, but I
understood the value and importance of protecting a good name. We have nailed
Virgin's colours to the masts of many businesses, so every one of them must
pull its weight with our customers.
The day-to-day survival of the Virgin brand
depends upon all kinds of companies, and if one of our companies spoils your
day, then that's the day more than just one Virgin company will suffer. That's
the day you write off our TV service and look up another broadband provider.
You reach into your wallet and there, poking out the top is a Virgin credit
card.
Well, you're not going to be using that again in a hurry. You reach into your pocket to make your call and there, in your hand, is a Virgin mobile phone. Whatever your brand stands for, you have to deliver on the promise. Don't promise what you can't deliver, and deliver everything you promise. That's the only way you'll ever control your brand. And beware: brands always mean something. If you don't define what the brand means, a competitor will.
Even in the absence of competition, a
betrayed brand can wreak terrible revenge on a careless company. How many
brands do you know mean 'shoddy? I am married with two children and I don't
have any regret in life.
I formed Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984,
launched Virgin Mobile in 1999, and Virgin Blue in Australia in 2000. I was chosen
9th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 worth just over £3 billion. In my
autobiography, I wrote of my decision to start an airline:
"My interest in life comes from setting
myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them...from
the perspective of wanting to live life to the full, I felt that I had to
attempt it."
In 1997 I undertook a step many saw as being
one of the riskiest businesses by entering into the railway sector Virgin
Trains won the franchises for the former Intercity West Coast and Cross-Country
sectors of British Rail Launched with the usual Branson fanfare with promises
of new high-tech tilting trains and enhanced levels of service Virgin Trains
soon ran into problems with the rolling stock and infrastructure it had
inherited from British Rail.
The
company's reputation was almost irreversibly damaged in the late 1990s as it
struggled to make trains reliably run on time while it awaited the
modernisation of the West Coast Main Line, and the arrival of new rolling
stock.
Virgin acquired European short-haul airline
Euro Belgian Airlines in 1996 and renamed it Virgin Express. In 2006 the
airline was merged with SN Brussels Airlines forming Brussels Airlines. I
started a national airline based in Nigeria, called Virgin Nigeria.
In our lists of fleet is Virgin America, an
airline that began operations in San Francisco International Airport in August
2007, I have also developed a Virgin Cola brand and even a Virgin Vodka brand,
which has not been a very successful enterprise.
As a consequence of these lacklustre
performers, the satirical British fortnightly magazine Private Eye has been
critical of me and my companies, which I see as non-constructive criticism.
On 25 September 2004, I announced the signing
of a deal under which a new space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, licensed
the technology behind Spaceship One- funded by Microsoft co-Founder Paul Allen
and designed by legendary American aeronautical engineer and visionary Burt
Rutan to take paying passengers into suborbital space. Virgin Galactic (wholly
owned by Virgin Group) plans to make flights available to the public by late
2009 with tickets priced at US$200,000 using Scaled Composites White Knight
Two.
As at today, my next venture with the Virgin
Group is Virgin Fuels, which is set to respond to global warming and exploit
the recent spike in fuel costs by offering a revolutionary, cheaper fuel for
automobiles and, in the near future, aircraft. Due to my leadership style and
charisma, I had been tagged a "transformational leader" in the
management lexicon, with my maverick strategies and the stress on the Virgin
Group.
We are an organisation driven on informality and information, one that is bottom-heavy rather than strangled by top-level management. On 21 September 2006; I pledged to invest the profits of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains in research of environmentally friendly fuels. The investment is estimated to be worth $3 billion.
On 4 July 2006, I sold my Virgin Mobile
company to UK cable TV, broadband, and telephone company NTL/NTL: Telewest for
almost £1 billion. As part of the sale, the company pays a minimum of £8.5
million per year to use the Virgin name and I became the company's largest
shareholder.
The new company was launched with much fanfare and publicity on 8 February 2007, under the name Virgin Media. The
decision to merge Virgin Media Company with NTL was in order to integrate both
of the companies compatible parts of commerce. Before now, I own three-quarters of Virgin Mobile, until now that I own 15 percent of the new Virgin
Media company.
In 2006, I formed Virgin Comics and Virgin
Animation an entertainment company focused on creating new stories for a
global audience. The company was founded with author Deepak Chopra, filmmaker
Shekhar Kapur and entrepreneurs Sharad Devarajan and Gotham Chopra. I launched
the Virgin Health Bank on February 1, 2007, offering parents-to-be the
opportunity of storing their baby's umbilical cord blood stem cells in private
and public stem cell banks after their baby's birth.
In June 2006, a tip-off from Virgin Atlantic
led US and UK competition authorities to investigate price-fixing attempts
between Virgin Atlantic and British Airways. In August 2007, British Airways
was fined £271 million over the allegations. Virgin Atlantic was given immunity
for tipping off the authorities and received no fine-a controversial decision
the Office of Fair Trading defended as being in the public interest.
Two months after, Virgin Group, sought to add
Northern Rock to its empire after submitting an offer that would result in my
personally owning 30% of the company, changing the company's name from Northern
Rock to Virgin Money. On 10 January 2008, Virgin Healthcare announced that it
would open a chain, of healthcare clinics that would offer conventional
medical care alongside homeopathic and complementary therapies.
The
Financial Times reported that Ben Bradshaw, UK's health minister, welcomed the
launch. In his words: "I am pleased that Virgin Healthcare is proposing to
work with GPs to help develop more integrated services for patients."
World record attempts
Richard
Branson made several world record-breaking attempts after 1985 when in the
spirit of the Blue Riband he attempted the fastest Atlantic Ocean crossing. His
first attempt in the "Virgin Atlantic Challenger" led to the boat
capsizing in British waters and a rescue by RAF helicopter, which received wide
media coverage. Some newspapers called for Branson to reimburse the
government for the rescue cost.
In 1986, in his "Virgin Atlantic
Challenger I", with sailing expert Daniel McCarthy, he beat the record by
two hours. A year later his hot air balloon "Virgin Atlantic Flyer"
crossed the Atlantic. This was the largest balloon at 2.3 million cubic feet
(65,000 m3), and the first hot-air balloon to cross the Atlantic. It reached
130 miles per hour (209 km/h).
In January 1991, Branson crossed the Pacific
from Japan to Arctic Canada, 6,700 miles (10,800 km), in a balloon of 2,600,000
cubic feet (74,000 m3). This broke the record, with a speed of 245 miles per
hour (394 km/h).
Between 1995 and 1998 Branson, Per Lindstrand, and Steve Fossett made attempts to circumnavigate the globe by balloon. In late
1998 they made a record-breaking flight from Morocco to Hawaii but were unable
to complete a global flight before Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones in
Breitling Orbiter in March 1999.
In September 2008 Branson and his children
made an unsuccessful attempt at an eastbound record crossing of the Atlantic
Ocean under sail in the 99 feet (30 m) sloop Virgin Money. The boat, also known
as Speedboat, is owned by NYYC member Alex Jackson, who was a co-skipper on
this passage, with Branson and Mike Sanderson.
After 2 days, 4 hours, winds of force 7 to 9
(strong gale), and seas of 40 feet (12 m), a 'monster wave' destroyed the
spinnaker, washed a ten-man life raft overboard, and severely ripped the main-
sail. She eventually continued to St. George's, Bermuda.
Entry into
politics
Branson was knighted in 1999 for
"services to entrepreneurship" and presented as a millennium icon. In
the 1980s, he was briefly given the post of "litter Tsar" by Margaret
Thatcher-charged with "keeping Britain tidy". He was again seen as
close to the government when the Labour Party came to power in 1997. In 2005 he
declared that there were only negligible differences between the two main
parties on economic matters.
Secrets of success
Virgin
enterprises are a conglomeration of wholly owned subsidiaries and outside
partnerships. Branson maintains a controlling interest in every company that he
starts. Virgin interests include retail stores, a travel group, an
entertainment group, a hotel enterprise, financial services, cinemas, radio
stations, and Virgin European Airways.
Branson runs the empire from the old villa where he lives with his family in London's Holland Park. Each business is a separate venture. He oversees each Startup Company, then delegates management and moves on. Branson relies on creative investment schemes and extremely private holdings. He retains control as CEO of his travel ventures, even as he acquires capital for his railway system venture.
Branson strategically keeps each company
small and controllable despite the conglomerate structure and operates each
enterprise as an individual small business. His companies offer employees a
pleasant work environment and the renegade Branson eschews computers; informal
communication is the hallmark of the Virgin regime. The personal needs of
employees take precedence, and even at times of dire financial straits, Branson
humanely sidesteps layoffs.
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