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Gerald
Ratner is a British household name. Born in
1949 and educated at Hendon County Grammar School, he joined the family
firm Ratners in 1965.
He took over his family's jewellery
business in 1984 which had at that time 130 stores. By 1990 it had 2,500
stores, 25,000 employees, annual sales of 1.2 billion and profits of 121
million.
Unfortunately he went down in history (he
was then Chairman-Chief Executive of Ratners Group, the world's largest
jewellery retail company which included H Samuel and Ernest Jones), when
at a corporate speaking engagement in 1991 at the Albert Hall for the
Institute of Directors, he described a sherry decanter (one of their
products), as total crap.
Gerald Ratner is very much in demand as a
business speaker and has also built an American business from scratch,
building it to over 1000 shops in the USA becoming one of the few uk
retailers to succeed on the other side of the atlantic. He now runs, the
UK’s largest online jewellery business Gerald Online.
Its a wild, up and down roller coaster
ride which Gerald Ratner talks about and he is not doing too badly now
with his house, swimming pool and Bentley Continental GT in the drive
and not forgetting his bicycle which he rides every day when he can. |
