Imagine the scene. Amstrad owner Lord Sugar sat in a Hong Kong hotel room with Dixon’s Chairman Stanley Kalms… Kalms had just told Lord Sugar, he’s computer arch-rival and Sinclair C5 inventor Clive Sinclair, was about to go bankrupt and there was a small opportunity Amstrad could buy the Sinclair brand. Price Waterhouse had asked

How did Best Buy recover from near bankruptcy to 7X their share price in 4 years? In December 2013, Best Buy shares were $10. But, by the close of 2017 they had skyrocketed to $70. Just for clarity, Best Buy is an American multi-national consumer electronics retailer. Their new CEO (Hubert Joly) had no retail

Good day. Ready for a business book review? ‘The Third Wave’ written by AOL founder and former CEO Steve Case is 3 books in one. It’s kind of like Case’s autobiography, the story of AOL’s rise & demise, and about entrepreneurship in the future. It appealed to me because I love to understand the back

Back in July 2019 we wrote a post about the passing of Primark founder Arthur Ryan, who was a legend and true retail pioneer. Ryan had done an amazing feat, taking Primark (then Penny’s) from a single Dublin store to 370 stores across 12 countries, with £7.8 billion revenues & nearly £1 billion in profit

Back in his pomp Lord Sugar was a genius at developing products for the mass market… One of his many successful strategies was to create the perfect product for the time at a disruptive price point, and then bring out an enhanced model priced at a reasonable premium. As with their first computer. The Amstrad

Creating the right culture in your business is critical… Personally, I don’t think many people rank its importance, but if you don’t get it right it can bring an organisation down, no matter their size. AOL Time Warner is the perfect example: At the end of 1999 AOL had 22 million subscribers and were valued

Good day… Depressed with another lockdown? Our first business book review of the year might help. Its Ant Middleton’s new book ‘Zero Negativity’. It’s his third book after ‘First Man In’ & ‘The Fear Bubble’, which were both excellent 5 star reads. You might think – what does Ant Middleton know about zero negativity and

The story of Greggs is amazing… Founded by John Gregg as a Tyneside bakery in 1939. It opened its first shop in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne in 1951. When John Gregg died in 1964, the bakery was taken over by his son, Ian Gregg (who wrote a book about Greggs in 2013), assisted by his

It’s time for another time loop journey in the revolving door, spin dryer or Dr Who’s Tardis… Reminding us of the brilliant 1993 film Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray (due to a severe snow storm) gets stuck in a time loop, continuously waking up at the start of the same day. Bill initially used each

Even Christmas didn’t stop our customers planting trees… Why? Our customers agreed 20 more home and office technology solutions in December. planting 20 more trees. You are truly amazing. Thank you SOOO much. Individuals, business & organisations who sign up to any of our print & scan technology solutions, internet phone packages or laptop with Microsoft Office 365 bundles. Get

The last business book review of 2020 will take you on Ray Kroc’s roller-coaster ride of a lifetime… His book ‘Grinding it out’ (written by Kroc) is not just about the making of McDonald’s, it’s also about the longest period of his life before the McDonald’s opportunity came along. I can imagine not a lot

During the UK’s darkest days… Churchill returned to his old school Harrow to give an inspiring commencement speech. Before the speech, the headmaster looked worrying across at Churchill, who had fallen asleep, and stayed that way for most of the ceremony. But when introduced, Churchill made his way to podium, looked out over the students,

According to Bloomberg the top 5 leaders in driverless cars are… Waymo Cruise Argo AI Aurora Aptiv Waymo. Is the self-driving car division of Alphabet Inc, which is the holding company for Google and many other former Google subsidiaries. Why Google split like this, we’ll explain another day. It’s thought Waymo remains ahead of the competition by

Good day… This week’s business book review follows on from ‘Good to Great’ (reviewed in November), which details how good companies became great, and sustained it for years. ‘How the Mighty Fall’ also written by Jim Collins, investigates why these once mighty companies (some even in the last book) suddenly start to crumble and even

Do you remember Zenith personal computers from the 80’s? They grew massive and became the 2nd biggest maker of IBM compatible personal computers, and could have become the DELL, HP, or Lenovo of today. But what stopped them? Well, they’ve got an interesting back story, which many don’t realise. In the 40’s eccentric mastermind Commander