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Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English entrepreneur, best known for his Virgin brand, a banner that encompasses a variety of business organizations. The name Virgin was chosen because a female friend involved in setting up the initial record label commented "We're all virgins at business".
Life and career
Sir Richard Branson was educated at Stowe until he was 15 years old, and he began his entrepreneurial activities there by setting up Student Magazine. When he was 17, he opened a Student Advisory Centre, his first charity institution. Branson set up a record mail order business in 1970, started a record shop in Oxford Street, London shortly afterwards, and then in 1972 the record label Virgin Records with Nik Powell, opening a recording studio.
The company's first issue was multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, which was to be a best-seller. Branson's company also courted controversy by signing bands like the Sex Pistols, whose contract more conventional companies had dispensed with. Virgin also introduced Culture Club to the music world. Later, in 1992, Branson sold the Virgin label to EMI, a more conservatively-minded company which had rescinded the contract of the Pistols. Branson is said to have wept when the sale was completed since the record business had been the genesis of the Virgin empire. He later formed V2 Records to re-enter the music business. In the early 1980's he purchased the gay Nightclub Heaven.
Branson has rarely worn the conventional businessman's uniform of shirt, tie and suit, preferring a more relaxed image. He was initially known for sporting a wide range of pullovers - which he later discarded after press reports pointed out they were less than fashionable. He then went through a period of wearing predominately black.
Described as "flamboyant" by the mainstream media, Branson's personality can partly be credited for his successful career. Branson is known for his outlandish media events used to promote his businesses. He is keen on playful antagonisms, exemplified by his "Mine is bigger than yours" decals on the new Airbus A340-600 jets used by his airline. Also displayed on Virgin Atlantic aircraft is a Vargas-designed Scarlet Lady, painted near the cockpit. This scantily-clad woman originally held a Virgin headscarf firmly on one hand (representing the future) and the airline's main rival, British Airways' headscarf in the other, which she is discarding (to represent the past). The design has since been adapted to make the image more "British" as she now holds a Union Jack flag.
Record breaking exploits
Richard Branson attempted to break the Blue Riband transatlantic speed record on Virgin Atlantic Challenger I and Virgin Atlantic Challenger II in 1985 and 1986 respectively, co-skippered by Sir Chay Blyth.
With balloon designer and builder, Per Lindstrand, in 1987 Branson successfully flew in the first hot air balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The Virgin Atlantic Flyer, was the most advanced hot air balloon ever built, and was then the largest ever flown at 60,513 m³ (2,137,000 ft³) volume. Designed as the first hot air balloon to fly in the jetstreams (high speed upper winds, often used by long-haul commercial aircraft to save fuel), the balloon reached ground speeds in excess of 130 mph (209 km/h). Also in 1987, Branson started Virgin Healthcare Foundation, a charity foundation that helps people with AIDS.
In 1991, again with Lindstrand, Branson crossed the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Arctic Canada in a hot air balloon. They travelled a distance of 7,672 km (4,767 miles), but their track took them a claimed 10,885 km. This again broke all existing records with speeds of up to 245 mph (394 km/h) in an even larger hot air balloon that remains the largest ever built — measuring 74,000 m³ (2,600,000 ft³). In December 1998, in an unsuccessful attempt to circumnavigate the world, Branson, partnered by Lindstrand and adventurer Steve Fossett, flew for 7 days and covered over 20,000 km in a Rozière balloon, launching from Morocco and landing in Hawaii.
In July 2003, Branson flew a replica of the first heavier-than-air flying machine, the glider designed by Sir George Cayley, at the original site in Yorkshire. In October in the same year, he announced that he would be lead sponsor for Steve Fossett in an attempt to break the record for a non-stop flight around the world. A new aircraft, the GlobalFlyer, was built specially for the attempt by Scaled Composites, and on March 3, 2005, at 01:50pm CST, Fossett completed the record-breaking flight in 67 hours and 1 minute, with an average speed of nearly 300 mph (480 km/h).
Business exploits
Branson formed Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984, launched Virgin Mobile in 1999, Virgin Blue in Australia in 2000, and later failed in a 2000 bid to handle the National Lottery.
In 1997 Branson took what many saw as being one of his riskier business exploits by entering into the railway business. 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 aging rolling stock and crumbling infrastructure it had inherited from BR. The company's reputation was almost irreversably 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 has also started a European short-haul airline, Virgin Express, and a national airline based in Nigeria, called Virgin Nigeria. Another airline, Virgin America, is set to launch out of San Francisco in 2006. Branson has also developed a Virgin Cola brand, but is now retreating only to the UK market, and even a Virgin Vodka brand, which has not been an overly successful enterprise. As a consequence of these lacklustre performers, satirical British fortnightly magazine, Private Eye, has been critical of Branson and his companies. (see Private Eye picture caption)
After the so-called campaign of "dirty tricks" (see expanded reference in Virgin Atlantic Airways), Branson sued rival airline British Airways for libel in 1992. John King, then-chairman of British Airways, countersued Branson, and the case went to trial in 1993. British Airways, faced with likely defeat, settled the case, giving £500,000 to Branson and a further £110,000 to his airline and had to pay legal fees of up to £3 million. Branson divided his compensation (the so-called BA bonus) among his staff.
On September 25, 2004 he announced the signing of a deal under which a new space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, will license the technology behind SpaceShipOne to take paying passengers into suborbital space. The group plans to make flights available to the public by late 2007 with tickets priced at $200,000. The deal was mostly financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and the modern American space engineer & visionary, Burt Rutan.
Branson has been tagged as a 'transformational leader' by management lexicon, with his maverick strategies and his stress on the Virgin Group as an organization driven on informality and information, one that's bottom heavy rather than strangled by top-level management.
Although Branson says his success was not planned, and it just happened, he has said that he has 10 secrets to success:
- You've got to challenge the big ones.
- Keep it casual.
- Haggle: everything is negotiable.
- Have fun working.
- Do the right things for the brand.
- Smile for the cameras!
- Don't lead "sheep", herd "cats".
- Move like a bullet.
- Size does matter.
- Be a common, regular person.
He was 9th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2006.
Politics
Branson was fêted by the Conservative government in the 1980s, and 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. He reputedly considered running for Mayor of London in 2004, but decided not to. Branson has described himself as a libertarian.
Honours
In 1993, Branson received the honorary degree of Doctor of Technology from Loughborough University.
He became Sir Richard Branson when he was knighted by the Queen in 1999 for "services to entrepreneurship".
He is the Patron of the International Rescue Corps which is one of the few truly independent front-line search and rescue organisations in the world - a UK registered charity, financed solely by donations and their own fund raising, and manned totally by volunteers.
He has guest starred, playing himself, on several television shows, including Friends, Baywatch, Birds of a Feather, The Daily Show, Only Fools and Horses, The Day Today and a special episode of the comedy Goodness Gracious Me. He also was the star of a reality television show on Fox called The Rebel Billionaire, in which sixteen contestants were tested for their entrepreneurship and sense of adventure. It did not succeed as a rival show to Donald Trump's The Apprentice and only lasted one season.
Sir Richard appears at No. 85 on the 2002 list of "100 Greatest Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public). His high public profile often leaves him open as a figure of satire — the 2000 AD series Zenith featured a parody of Branson as a supervillain, as the comic's publisher and favoured distributor and the Virgin group were in competition at the time. He is also caricatured in The Simpsons episode Monty Can't Buy Me Love as the tycoon Arthur Fortune, and as the ballooning megalomaniac Richard Chutney (a pun on Branson) in Believe Nothing.
See also
References
- Branson, Richard. Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, And Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way, 1999, Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0812932293
- Branson, Richard. Losing My Virginity, Revised Edition First Published in Great Britain by Virgin Books Limited, London, 2002
- Branson, Sir Richard and Prescot, Colin. To the Edge of Space: The Adventures of a Balloonist, 2000, Boxtree. ISBN 0752218654
- Branson, Sir Richard. Sir Richard Branson, the Autobiography, 2002, Longman. ISBN 0582512247
- Branson, Sir Richard. Losing my virginity — The autobiography, 2005, ISBN 0753510200
- Bower, Tom. Branson, 2001, ISBN 1841154008
External links
- Virgin Corporate Website
- virginbrand.com Unofficial blog of the Virgin Group
- International Rescue Corps
- Gonzo Way of Branding Fast Company magazine article on Sir Richard Branson
- Unofficial blog of Sir Richard Branson
- Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI)
- International Ballooning Commission (CIA) notable flights
- Svenska Ballongfederationen, Pacific ocean flights
- Profile on BBC News dated September 27, 2004
- Video Interview on CBC News: The Hour dated November 21, 2005
- Richard Branson - TV Tome profile
- Unofficial Branson "Quest For The Best" website - Media Man Australia
- Universe Daily - interactive forum about Space Tourism.