By CHRIS GRAEME
EASYJET – most of us have at one time or another, flown on the low cost, no frills airline.
Its bright orange and white colours and clearly identifiable 0800 number and www.easyjet.com logos have emblazoned their fleet of 150 planes which fly to and from Faro and Lisbon and a whole host of other European holiday destinations and capitals.
But what about the billionaire man behind the instantly recognisable brand? How many of us know anything about the Greek impresario Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou?
I say impresario, although one could easily have said buccaneer, adventurer and risk-taker par excellence, for that is what Mr easyJet seems to be.
Mr Easy
He is surprisingly young, affable, approachable, an obvious bon viveur and above all relaxed, encouraging all the stressed and suited executives at the British-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce dinner at the Hotel Marriot on Thursday to take off their ties, jackets and get informal.
And what a sense of humour the man has. Unlike so many famous, but dry, bankers and stock market grandees the Chamber has hosted over the years, this entertaining self-starter had the room in barrels of laughter for over an hour.
And no question, no matter how controversial or indelicate, seemed too direct; all were answered with a disarming frankness and charm, a spade being called a spade with a cheeky grin.
Mr Easy, as he is called, wasn’t exactly a rags to riches story like Richard Branson. His father was a Greek shipping magnate. However, he is certainly a chip off the old block and had a strategic vision of his own as soon as he left the London School of Economics after completing his degree course in that subject.
Since the late 1980s he has created no less than 17 Easy companies, not all of them wildly profitable like the airline made famous on the British TV programme Airport, but recognisable the world over in an instant: easyCar, easyCruise and easyHotel among them.
And now the entrepreneur is bringing easyHotels to Portugal, where those that want a bed for the night and no other frills can expect to pay out around 35 Euros for a room.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing though. His internet café business expanded rapidly and became somewhat overstretched like his fertile imagination, and lost money. But then he never bet on more than he could lose and, forget the business manuals, that’s the way to learn – through costly mistakes, he says.
Mr. easyJet also has his fingers in other businesses from recruitment to watches, and of course, the family Greek shipping family. Onassis eat your heart out!
Generous
And he’s really quite a generous man at heart, by all accounts, quite the philanthropist, providing scholarships to underprivileged students at the LSE among other institutions, and he sold his own personal art collection to raise money for a Greek children’s charity.
“I convinced my father in 1991 to let me have a go at starting up my own business. He told me, only if you go and do it in the United Kingdom. So with five million pounds I arrived at an insalubrious backwater called Luton, a far cry from my comfortable existence in glamorous surroundings in Athens,” he explained.
Mr. Stelios, as he was then known, set up an office trying to convince people to fly from Luton to Glasgow for 29 pounds. Of course the idea model was nothing new and came from the successful US airline South West Airlines and Ryanair.
What started with a couple of phones and an office with a few leased planes, ended up being a carrier transporting 38 million people in 150 planes.
“In order to grow you’ve got to invest and to get the investment it was necessary to float the company on the stock market, although I kept a 40 per cent share and the Easy brand name,” he reflects.
“However setting up serial businesses, rather like being a serial killer, is a risky business, the more you do, the more chance you’ve got of getting caught out!” he mused.
“I take more risks than most and it’s important to have the right partners and brand management,” he explained.
Funny story
And are low cost airlines here to stay? Mr Easy believes they are. People like to travel; it broadens the mind, educates us to new cultures, and helps prevent wars and xenophobia because we get a taste of other cultures.
And a funny story to end up on: When he started easyJet in 1995, he didn’t even have e-mail. A man who had booked his honeymoon phoned up and demanded to speak to Mr Easy himself and was put through.
The man explained that his honeymoon was off and his wedding had to be cancelled for his non-refundable flight to Palma, Majorca.
“I’ll make an exception, due to the circumstances, and offer you a refund,” said Mr Easy sympathetically.
“No, no, I don’t want a refund! I want the right to change the name on the ticket so I can take someone else instead!” he replied.
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