The talk started off with Mr. Branson telling the story of how he started his first venture, a magazine called Student.
Richard convinced his parents to let him leave school in order to pursue the newspaper fulltime. While running the Student from a basement in London, Richard noticed that stores were not discounting records. Richard began to run ads in the Student offering records at discount prices. The orders flooded in and record sales soon became more profitable than subscription sales. Richard quickly set up an office above an old shoe store and Virgin Records was born.
Since then, Virgin has grown to be one of the most recognized brands in Britain. More than 200 companies carry the Virgin name (and Richard Branson claims no prior expertise in any of them). Branson started Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984 with just a single plane and built the airline into an international business with annual sales of approximately 1.5 billion pounds. In 1992, Richard sold Virgin Records to Thorn EMI for $1 billion and invested the profits into Virgin Atlantic. Branson has launched a variety of businesses ranging from cellular phones to soft drinks to bridal wear. It is estimated that the Virgin brand is now worth around $5 billion.
In addition to his business ventures, Richard relishes adventure and has attempted to break a number of land and air speed and distance records. In 1986, he raced his boat, "Virgin Atlantic Challenger II" across the Atlantic Ocean, in the fastest time ever recorded. The following year, Branson's hot air balloon, "Virgin Atlantic Flyer," was the first hot air balloon to ever cross the Atlantic. In 1991, he crossed the Pacific Ocean, breaking all existing speed and distance records. He has since attempted to fly his balloon around the world, escaping two near fatal disasters.
Today's Virgin is well-esteemed as one of the major drivers of innovation in commercial aviation. Famed for it's neon-glowing cabins and irreverent company language, it has been gaining more and more customers and today holds significant portions of the market for passenger aviation in several countries, with a market share of 30% in Australia alone.
What an impressive man.
Ending today's blog with a quote from Mr. Branson:
“Whether you are launching a start-up or leading an established company, you should start establishing your social media presence if you haven’t already.”
Andres Mendoza, Salesforce Innovation Blog
No comments:
Post a Comment