Episode 1 Peter Jones Meets...

Big business is tough. But I believe there are certain factors that give

us all a fighting chance of turning our dreams of success into reality.

I'm on a mission to get inside the minds of some of Britain's

most successful entrepreneurs and find out how they made it.

I always knew I was to make a few quid, you know what I mean?

I don't remember really being content. Enough is never enough.

I'll be studying their personalities just as hard as their business models.

Maybe I need the business more than it needs me.

In a bid to unearth what drives these diverse characters,

I'll also be asking some difficult questions.

Have you been told that you're mad?

Well, I think there's always been a very fine line

between insanity and genius.

And I'll be finding out how they survived

when they faced their biggest challenges.

I was so busy and I'd had this lump in my breast.

-So, you realised you had a lump...

-Well, yeah, but then...

-..and you did nothing about it.

-No.

My goal is to find out if it's our individual DNA

that controls our destiny or whether there's a blueprint for success.

Tonight, I'm digging into a pair of thriving businesses with

wildly different attitudes and approaches to making money.

I'll be meeting Mark and Mo Constantine, who've turned

problems into prosperity with cosmetics chain Lush.

Some of the basic business practices we weren't good at.

I think we were arrogant, I think we had too long a party

and I think as a result, we did a much better job the second time around.

And Chris Dawson, an ex-market trader who's also overcome personal challenges...

-In those days...

-So, you are dyslexic, then?

-For sure, yeah.

I'm not ashamed of it, but when I left school I couldn't...

Well, I can't write now.

-You can't write at all?

-No, not at all.

..but now runs The Range, a discount department store business

that has become a multi-million pound success.

I want more all the time. Is it greed? OK. Then it's greed.

Chris Dawson visits each of his 70 discount department stores

six times a year.

He's racking up the air miles, but with a reported

personal fortune of £400 million, it seems to be paying off.

-I think it's the eight stores today, isn't it?

-Eight would be fine, but nine would be good.

In 2011, Chris' profits were up 30% to £26 million

with turnover climbing to nearly £300 million.

No wonder he had a smile on his face as we met,

ready to make our way to his Bournemouth store.

-You travel in some style, don't you?

-You can talk, look at this.

-Off to your store?

-Are you going to give me a lift?

-Come on.

-Let's get in.

Ex-market trader Chris likes nothing more than making money fast

-and splashing the cash.

-I love making money. Why?

Because I like using it, that's why. That's not a crime, is it?

Chris' stores sell everything from garden gnomes and picnic hampers

to plasma TVs and karaoke machines.

My mission is to explore the route Chris took to the top and

delve into the mind of this market- trader-turned-multimillionaire.

The Range. I've got my golf clubs in the car. Do you...

It's not that kind of range, is it?

There's a firing range - but if we see shoplifters, we just shoot them.

Are all your store managers like you?

Most of them are entrepreneurial. They're proper traders, you know.

For instance, they were opening Sundays, whether the law was correct or not.

If they could spot a couple of people walking up

and down the road, they would just open up. Within reason, of course.

We have got... It's a big company,

so we've got to have some structure, but...

So, you were opening on Sundays when

you're not allowed to open on Sundays.

Yeah, well, you can go to church first and come to us after.

Or the other way around, we're not fussy which way you do it.

'Flouting Sunday trading laws and shooting shoplifters?

'I'd only been with Chris for a short time

'and I was enjoying his banter.

'But I was also wondering how much of what he was going to tell me

'was actually true.'

-OK, let me show you around, Peter.

-Right, this is going to be fun.

-What sort of things do you sell, Chris?

-Practically everything. It's...

-What a tremendous line.

-Silver Buddha.

-Yeah, silver.

-What would your margin be on that?

-A lot.

PETER LAUGHS

-Should've guessed that.

-Yeah.

-There'll be quite a lot in the...

-It's quite blingy, isn't it?

Well, that the lamp is in a very famous department store at 122.99.

-What, the same lamp?

-Exactly the same factory.

And I know because we're in trouble for selling it.

'Chris clearly isn't afraid to test the boundaries of business.'

You can put out candles with it and failing that,

you could put a bell in it and do that, you know.

It doubles up as a bell.

'Chris' patter was good.

'But I didn't want to be taken in by any sales pitch.

'I did, however, sense that seeing Chris interact with customers

'was something not to be missed.'

Who's got all the money? You or Mum?

-Daddy.

-Daddy. I'll get out then.

-And it's a pound a tin.

-Pound a tin?

Deposit.

THEY LAUGH

Chinese, Hong Kong, bing-bong, Taiwan, I gone wrong.

-How many grandchildren have you got?

-62.

-62?

-Yeah.

You're not a rabbit family, are you?

-Do you buy stolen gear?

-No.

Well, you just have, here, help yourself.

We sort of do counterfeit credit cards, if you want to buy any.

Do you want any of them?

# Oh, leaning on a lamp post

# When a certain little lady goes by #

'Chris was on fire.

'Showman and salesman, always on the move

'and always trying to make money.'

-You love it, don't you?

-Absolutely love it. Completely.

It's like a big circus to me. It's a ringmaster type feeling.

You know, you've got all the punters, you've got the stock

and if you can turn the punters on and make sure they buy the kit,

you end up with a few quid to go with it.

You know, when I was a market trader, you know,

we would start when it's dark and leave when it's dark

and you had to squeeze absolutely every penny,

cos you never knew what tomorrow would bring and once

I hit the stock, the customers and the old chemistry just fires up.

My time with Chris was certainly going to be entertaining.

His market trader past was clearly in his DNA.

But before digging into it, I had an appointment with

Mark and Mo Constantine in Poole.

Their company is cleaning up in the highly competitive cosmetics industry.

-Mark?

-Good to see you.

-Good to meet you.

-Hi, lovely to see you.

-Great to meet you. Well, this is it.

This is our lovely factory,

if you'd like to come in, I'll show you round.

-After you.

-Thank you.

'This husband and wife team own over 850 shops worldwide

'and in 2012, sold £368 million worth of soap, shampoo and scents.'

The UK's cosmetics and toiletries industry is worth

a reported £8 billion a year.

With record profits of over £30 million,

the Constantines are laying claim to a healthy slice of this.

But Mark and Mo claim it's not all about the money.

We're often presented as an ethical business.

I don't see us in that light really, if I'm honest.

I hope that we do business as one should do business, I think

that's how everyone should do business.

I want to discover how Mark and Mo balance their principles

with profit.

If you'd like to come in here, Peter,

this is the room we call the dairy.

This is where most of our products are made.

We've always likened ourselves to a kitchen,

so many of the ingredients that we use you could cook with, you can eat.

We've got some olive branch shower gel being made

and Bob is over there juicing mandarins.

So all of your products have natural ingredients within them.

So you've really got to get your product there, ready, done,

manufactured very quickly.

And out there. You have a 36-month life cycle

on the conventional cosmetic.

We have a 12-month cycle on ours

and we tell people when it comes to an end,

so we have this really fast turnaround,

so you have to make the product, get it out, get it in the shops,

get it sold and then move on.

Husband and wife Mark and Mo started Lush with five co-founders in 1995.

It smells fabulous.

Cosmetics have excited me since I was 14.

I loved the idea of changing people's appearance.

I find it intriguing that you can make somebody feel so much better

about themselves by virtue of them using something lovely.

They've always invented their own products,

making them using no preservatives where possible,

little packaging and no ingredients tested on animals.

Yeah, very nice.

'They're principles that we've adhered to over the years.

'We've prided ourselves on being able to offer the general public'

an alternative to an animal-tested product and we have stuck with it.

Mark and Mo say they manage their business based on their passions

and principles.

I wanted to discover the origins of both

and see if they really put them into practice.

As a business, I'm getting the sense that the environmental credentials

are absolutely paramount.

It's not the credentials. It's the principle.

The principle of what you're trying to achieve within the business.

There's a difference. Credentials would be greenwash. The principles are the principles,

they're the things we want to achieve.

You're always trying to aim to get to a situation where there's no waste.

Where everything that you've used comes back and is used again,

everything is used again, everything is used again,

so that you don't have large amounts of resources just being

squandered and then put into landfill.

Despite only spending a short amount of time with Chris Dawson,

I was pretty sure that sacrificing bigger profits for the sake

of the environment wasn't top of his to-do list.

Arriving at his HQ in Plymouth confirmed my suspicions.

There were some nice cars in the car park, but I was expecting

a man as flash as Chris to have a slightly grander entrance.

-Chris.

-Peter, good morning, how are you?

-This is it. This is your empire.

-You're at HQ.

-What am I going to see?

-You're going to see not a lot.

This is what £2-a-foot looks like. OK?

If we had a gold-plated head office,

would I take any more money in Bolton and Wigan?

Well, the answer's clearly no.

Chris might currently be riding high in the rich lists,

employing over 5,000 staff and running 70 stores nationwide,

but he started in the '70s as a market trader, selling moccasins.

His stall went from strength to strength

and by the early '80s, he says he was earning up to £38,000 a week,

selling everything from pots and pans to wellies and watches.

See, you've got The Sun, real-life Del Boy. Is that you?

A large part of it. I do believe so.

There was definitely bits that was deja vu. I thought, "I've said that.

"We've looked like that." And some of the stories were uncannily close

and some of the sayings, when they were selling watches and the like...

-And do you carry any watches?

-I carry a few watches, yeah.

When I go out of an evening I get told off by her indoors,

I do knock at a few watches and lighters because I have a theory,

-if I want to go knock two or three hundred quid out...

-You don't!

You don't go out to dinner with your wife and sell watches, do you?!

-I get scanned before I go out.

-I'm a bit worried. I'm going to...

I'm going to make this safe already!

Well, I do expensive watches!

Are you going to show me around?

I'm going to show you around. There's plenty more to see.

After you. After me, after you. All right. Same thing.

'I had the feeling that my time with Chris was going to be fun, but

'I was determined to get to know the real man behind the Del Boy facade.'

When not spending time opening stores in the UK,

Chris splashes the cash on his villa in Cannes.

This is where I get fed.

I don't know where everything is. There's a dishwasher here somewhere.

My business strategy has always been the same.

Go like hell, go as fast as you can, get as much as you can

for as long as you can.

So this is the staff kitchen where it's got all the...

I don't know what that is, even.

If you create success, then you get paid.

This wasn't free, was it? This was a lot of graft.

I absolutely love trading. Turning a pound into five pound...

Hang on, I'll just correct that. The Revenue could be watching this.

Turning a pound into £1.50.

I do a lot of thinking here,

I do an amazing lot of thinking with a glass of vino.

I don't remember really being content or satisfied,

and enough is never enough.

Chris's thirst for success and its trappings is insatiable.

But will he be as open or bold

when I try to find out how his business mind really works?

Chris, these are all your stores.

We used to own a fair few of these, but we don't any more.

I could show you a mathematical fact it's actually cheaper to pay rent

than have all that money sat there.

That money should be off doing something else like buying stock

-and...

-That's how you raised a lot of your capital, to finance

-the growth of the business?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Clever.

It's... It's...

You can't pull your socks up if you can't reach them, can you?

And what we've done over the years, it might look clever now, but

I'm not being arrogant, but isn't that what you're supposed to do?

Buy, sell, buy, sell, invest profit

and the rest should be self-fulfilling.

If you can only open two stores here, open two.

OK, we can go round buying big groups of stores,

but if you do a 10, maybe 15-year programme, or a 20-year programme,

we'll financially end up at the same place, but with a surplus of money.

And what's the average margin you make?

-Gross margin?

-Oh, dear, oh, dear.

We're up there with anybody else's margin.

-That's as close as you're going to get to that one.

-60% gross?

-Wouldn't that be nice?

-40?

-40? No, no.

-50?

-It's...

-It's high, isn't it?

Well, it keeps me in Bentleys.

'Chris was obviously avoiding giving me real information,

'but that wasn't going to stop me from getting it in the end.'

Well, it looks a bit like a jumble sale

but it's a jumble sale that makes a lot of money.

'I wondered whether a tour of the office would reveal more

'about his business ethos.'

You wouldn't believe that sells for a pound, would you?

-Well, you'd be right, it doesn't. It's £4.99.

-So what is all this?

-What's in here?

-Well, there's two buying departments.

Do they know where everything is?

It looks like a little bit of a disorganised mess.

Well...we tidied up, actually.

-I notice there's a few cables hanging down.

-Yeah, well, yeah.

-Is that all right?

-What's all right? What's the matter with it?

I don't know, they look a little bit unsafe to me.

No, it's designer, it's meant to be like that.

Perfection is too costly.

I'm prepared to put up with the bits and pieces here and there

because the cost of that, I'm spending £20 to earn a tenner.

-No point.

-But if you're buying team bought the wrong product

at the wrong price, you'd be in trouble, wouldn't you?

THEY would, yeah.

They would be in big trouble. But if...

This is a very interesting point.

Let's just say, for instance, this beautiful piece here.

If that was a wrong line and it cost us a tenner,

and we sold it for a fiver, what does that say?

It means you've lost £5.

Well, what the hell are we doing losing five pounds?

Why don't we sell it for a pound

and use that money we're losing and call it marketing?

Because if you walked out with that under your arm for a quid,

you're the biggest advertising board I've ever had.

If you don't tell ten people, I'll eat my hat,

-so if we've ruined it, we then convert it into marketing.

-Yeah.

So they're going to buy that for one pound.

It cost you ten, so you lose nine, but they're going to come back

and buy three toilet brushes at 5 quid that cost you 50p?

Well, I'm not going to say how much we paid for them but you're close.

'It's clear that it's profit that's on Chris's agenda.

'I was beginning to see a sharp business brain beneath Chris's

'Del Boy disguise.

'And I sensed that there was still much more to discover.'

Mark and Mo had convinced me that they take their responsibility

to the environment seriously.

But they run a massive business,

employing around 10,000 people worldwide,

so can they be as caring towards their staff as they are the planet?

-What's it like working for Lush?

-Well, it's great, really.

I've been here since I left school

so I've been here for nearly 15 years now.

Is there anything unusual that the company does?

-There's lots unusual that we do.

-Is there?

-Yeah.

Every year Mark and Mo dish out wish lists to the managers.

I wanted to work on R&D sort of stuff,

so I put that on my wish list and it came true.

-Can you put anything down on the wish? Could I wish to...

-People do.

They put bizarre things down sometimes.

Someone wanted us to organise a wedding in Italy. We did that.

-You did it?

-Yes, absolutely.

Wow.

Mark and Mo's intriguing way of incentivising their workforce

got me thinking about Chris's attitude to his staff.

This is the hub.

'He told me that he'd scrapped his HR department, and I sense that

'he would rather be chasing invoices than organising staff wish lists.'

We're pretty strict on everything we do here.

The old saying, look after the pennies,

the pounds will look after themselves. That was £1.20 out.

That's an invoice

-and they've sent their paperwork back for £1.20 credit.

-Correct.

But sometimes I could be chasing 120. It's meticulous down to every penny.

As well managing a chain of retail stores,

Chris is a property developer, runs a carpet cleaning company

and, amongst others, a shopfitting business.

Any other business that's not related to retail?

-Er...

-That you're not telling me about.

Yeah, I don't think I'll tell you the other one. Not yet anyway.

What's the other one?

Erm...

I might regret saying this,

but we know there's an amazing problem with lending money.

That's going to go on for three to four more years.

I'll look at a company,

providing I can hold enough of their property, I'll loan them money.

-So you...

-I loan money, yeah.

-Basically.

-Like a loan shark?

-Well, I wouldn't say a loan shark.

-Do you charge normal rates?

-No, no.

-No, not at all. No, I charge as much as...

-High rates?

Yeah, very high rates.

Chris, come on, what's the difference?

The difference is, you can tell me to get stuffed.

-You don't have to have it, do you?

-If I asked you for £1 million, what would you lend it at?

I'd charge you as much as I'd look at your business can afford.

If I was to charge you 200 grand and realise that you can only do 50,

you'll go skint, what's the point? I won't get my money back.

The only reason people come and see me,

cos all the other doors are shut.

They don't come and see me cos they like me.

I wouldn't say last chance saloon - we're a service

but I will not allow people to borrow millions off me,

or 500 grand or whatever, if I think they can't pay it back.

I will study that business.

And if I make a fool of myself or I blow the money...

Do you not think doing all these different things,

there will come a point where you will drop a ball somewhere?

I hope so, because that means...

If I can juggle every ball easily, well,

I should be doing two or three more, shouldn't I?

Or doing more of the same.

If I start to drop balls, I know I've maximised myself.

And that's a good point. You've maximised.

My job today is to beat yesterday, and tomorrow I want to beat today.

It's not a problem, is it?

If I won four gold medals, could I have won five or six?

'I know from experience how hard it is to juggle more than one business.'

Managed incorrectly

and Chris's diverse business interests might become a hindrance.

But I can see that he loves trading

and will do all that he can to simply make more money.

Chris is refreshingly upfront about his motivation,

but so far, Mark and Mo have been less revealing about their attitude

to cash. I wanted to know

if they were as excited about profit as they were about their principles.

So here we are in the ballistic room.

This is where all our bath bombs are made.

Mark, Mo and the team produce and sell over 300 products.

And one of their bestselling and most lucrative is the bath bomb.

How many bath bombs will be made a day?

-At the moment, they're making about 60,000 in a day.

-In a day?

-Yeah.

Yeah. And I think they topped...

Last year we topped about 15 million in the whole year.

-Who came up with the idea?

-That would be me, primarily,

-in the late '80s.

-How does that make you feel?

You've created a product that sells 15 million.

-Terrified, actually. Yeah.

-Not excited, but terrified?

I'm terrified at the success of it all, I think.

Because when I'm making things, for a start we were very hungry,

you don't flash forward and think, "This will be great,

"we could make 15 million of these." Do you know what I mean?

It's not how you work.

Does Mo often tease you that, really, she was the one that's made

this all happen?

Has that conversation ever happened in the bedroom,

-if you don't mind me being so rude?

-What, pillow talk?

-Pillow talk.

We've got a little rule that we won't talk about business

without our underwear on!

There aren't many married couples in business as successful

as Mark and Mo.

'I wondered how they had divided their roles

'and whether two heads are better than one.

'So it's time for me to get hands-on, even if it does mean wearing

'an apron and rubber gloves.'

-First of all, you're going to dip into this bucket here.

-Yeah.

Put a nice dollop of white topping in. Just press it in...

'I wanted to find out the ingredients at the centre

'of their success.'

Slam those two parts together and sort of screw them round

till the two halves of the mould meet. How is that looking?

-I think mine is better than yours.

-Do you reckon? OK.

What's the secret of your success working together?

-Please tell me you've got a secret!

-We haven't got a secret.

-No, I'm sorry. We have no secret.

-I think it's just habit, isn't it?

-Rub along well together.

-It can't be easy. Husband and wife. Come on.

We have very, very different places that we work,

so you never see me in this environment, this is Mo's favourite environment.

So that makes a big difference.

Mo looks after manufacturing worldwide, with her team.

I look after the retail more and the business side more.

I'm broad-stroke, you're medium-stroke.

-And I like to get things done as well.

-I'm not interested in detail.

No. I'm very practical.

And so when I suspect that either someone's life or their time

or their energy is going to be wasted, I do like to just get

to the nub of it there and then and say, I don't think we should do this.

-I've got this thing about success - marry well.

-There we are.

-And you've done that.

-I was thinking Mo!

Childhood sweethearts Mark and Mo married in 1973.

Initially, Mark worked as a hairdresser.

But in the early '70s, Mark set up a small beauty salon in Poole,

with his friend and colleague Liz Weir.

It wasn't long before Mo joined them full-time,

developing new products in her garden shed.

It was here that Mo invented the bath bomb.

I'll tell you what, if I had met Mo 20 years ago and knew

she was going to sell 15 million of these, I would have married her.

-Yes, well hard luck - I was there first.

-Oh, boys!

Mark and Mo's formidable partnership has helped them face

the many challenges that business has brought their way.

'The growth of Chris Dawson's business has also been

'a labour of love. But before I left his HQ, I wanted to separate fact

'from fiction, and hear more about his muse.

'Money.'

Chris, why are we sitting here?

Well, it's my jungle. It's my environment.

In fact, when the final day comes, you can bury me amongst the stock.

-I love it.

-You want to be buried in your warehouse?

Well, I've got loads but this'll do, it's fine.

-There's clearly no luck in this.

-No, no.

-What is your business ethos?

OK, well, if you maximise the day, you know,

if I can get 70 minutes out of every hour, there is no relax,

there is no, "That'll do," there is no, "That's almost right,

"we'll do this tomorrow."

I don't mind having a sense of humour,

but I'll put the energy into what is going to be the biggest return.

What about success? How do you measure success?

OK, well, success to me is a big scoreboard in the sky,

and I challenge myself to beat figures - turnover figures,

net profit figures, balance sheets, the amount of stores.

How long the applause was when I done a speech. I want more all the time.

Is it greed? OK.

Then it's greed. I'm very, very greedy for more success.

One of the secrets to Chris's success is his belief that

he can make the impossible happen.

He set up one of Britain's first discount superstores,

just outside Plymouth in the late '80s.

It sold everything, from toys and homeware to DIY equipment

and jewellery. Within four months, turnover hit £1 million

and Chris claims to have made a £250,000 profit in his first year.

By 2009, Chris was in a position to make a deal so outrageous

that its details have remain secret.

Until now.

You did a deal, and a pretty successful one, with MFI.

-Yes, that's right.

-Tell me what happened.

Yeah, it depends if you want the drunken version, the real version,

the version I need to tell the Revenue or the Trading Standards.

-Which one do you want?

-Give me the real one.

I'm going to give you the real one. OK. We...

Everybody was up to buy this MFI.

We told the press at the time that we had amazing competition.

There wasn't one. Because we got the press out first.

They said, "Dawson's in battle with five or eight people."

We probably made the names up. But the press, bless them, printed it.

So you had no competition.

Well, after what we done, well, we would've if... So...

That's life, isn't it?

So I'm sat in a deckchair in Barbados and funny enough,

we had a Del Boy thing.

You know, the umbrella. This is true.

And, "Mr Dawson?" I said, "Yes, quite right."

And he said, "About this MFI stock..."

And I thought, "Great, I can see the pound notes now."

And I said, "OK, I'll have it all.

"Every bit of it. Forklifts, the lot." And I put the phone down.

-How much for?

-I'm not telling you.

15 seconds had gone by.

I'm going like this. 20 seconds.

30 seconds. I'm over a minute now. I thought, "Dawson, you've blown it.

"You ain't so clever as you think you are." Ring, ring.

The guy's on the end of the phone. I felt like kissing him.

"Erm, erm, erm..." A bit flustered.

"Erm, you...

"You said you'd have all of it, but you don't know the price."

I said, "You don't know what I'm going to give you either. Goodbye." It went on like that.

And what did you pay for it?

-Erm, not a lot.

-Say it quietly. You can whisper it to me.

Well, we'll have a competition.

So if I had paid nine million, you'd have thought I was a star.

If I'd paid eight, you'd have thought, "This boy's nicked it."

-Had I paid six, you'd think, "He's telling lies."

-Yeah.

Had I paid five, you would've thought I'd been drinking.

All I'm going to tell you, I got change out of three mill.

And I can remember drinking I don't know how many of these other things

in Barbados and I fell off the chair and said,

"I think I've just bought a hell of a deal." We made a lot of money on it.

-A lot.

-Wow.

If that was the real version, it's an incredible revelation.

Having tricked the opposition into retreating, Chris secured himself

at least £60 million worth of retail goods for just under three.

You sail really close to the wind.

How far are you prepared to go to be successful?

What it takes.

Whatever it takes is what I'll do.

I just desperately want to win. And I mean desperate.

Chris certainly tells a good story, but I was left wondering

if he's an expert entrepreneur, a relentless genius or both.

Whichever way you look at it, he deserves to be given credit

for building a reported personal fortune of over £400 million

from nothing.

Mark and Mo may have some seriously green credentials,

but let's not forget that they too are guided in part

by the colour of money.

I'm curious how they use their fortune, estimated at £150 million.

Normally when you meet entrepreneurs running successful businesses,

especially, you know, not even perhaps the size of your business,

there's normally a little bit of... the trappings of success are shown.

-They're either hidden in the car park with some nice flashy cars.

-I've got a very nice jacket!

Do you not think I'm looking...?

Yeah, as I was saying, Mark!

-Lovely jacket.

-Thank you.

Money. Is it like the unspoken word?

No, we talk about it.

-You do?

-Yeah.

The money we have we're either spending on ourselves

or we're giving to someone else to spend.

You can give small amounts of money to dynamic groups

and they can make it go so far. And that's really exciting.

That what we can do, in our business,

is really make a contribution.

Donating to good causes is not unusual,

but the Constantines have used their company to protest

against some very high profile issues.

In 2008, they campaigned for fair trials at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

-It was a suggestion from Clive Stafford Smith, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

Human rights lawyer.

He's a human rights lawyer and he actually coined the phrase

"Buy one, set one free."

And I knew straightaway then that was a product,

and so while the discussion was going on at the time, I nipped over

to my lab and I made the ballistic that had a peace dove on the top.

So you literally would put this product into your bath

and it would float. Yeah.

-We sold that.

-Really?

-Yeah.

So that was a really successful thing.

It was successful because they were both released.

And how far would you go?

Well, we had a situation with the hunt job where we were

selling a product on behalf of hunt saboteurs.

And hunt supporters came in, intimidated the staff,

pushed things off the shelf.

That was a bit of an issue for me because I don't like the thought

that our staff were put in some kind of danger.

I wasn't expecting that kind of reaction from hunt supporters.

But I wouldn't really put someone else in danger if I could avoid it.

No, absolutely.

'Their controversial campaigning shows that the Constantines

'have a steely backbone.

'But I wondered if the accompanying publicity brought other benefits.'

You've dealt with very controversial issues out there,

-not just in the UK market but in a global sense.

-Yeah.

Is that PR, or is that a belief?

It can be both, of course.

It can be your belief and it can create publicity.

There's always this sort of thing like, you know,

they're doing that for the publicity.

Well, if it creates an interest, it gets the message out there,

and it sells a product, you know? Where's the problem?

Mark and Mo have built their company around some strong principles,

and even used their ideals as a powerful marketing tool.

It is clear that the Constantines have proved that you can mix profit

with politics. But I was left wondering

whether these happy hippies had always found business so easy.

What most surprised me about Mark and Mo were their honest answers

to some pretty sensitive questions.

I was hoping to make the same breakthrough with Chris Dawson.

-There we go, Chris.

-Thank you very much, sir.

Chris, like all good entrepreneurs, sees openings and opportunity

in everything that he does.

He's proud to be open about wanting more

and showing how determined he is to achieve it.

I wanted to get to the root of his success by exploring his childhood,

and that meant going back to where it all started - his old school.

-So this is it.

-This is it.

Long time ago, eh?

-Were you academic at school?

-Oh, no, not at all. I didn't have a clue.

I struggled to write the date on the top and the answers, no.

Completely no. I didn't really enjoy school.

-You didn't?

-No, because it was awkward for me.

I was forever in trouble simply because I didn't have an ability

to learn anything.

It just went over my head, practically everything I done.

Were you dyslexic? Have you got any...

Yeah, yeah, dyslexic, yes. Indeed I was. But in those days...

-So you are dyslexic, then?

-For sure, yeah.

And in those days they would call it backward,

but it was no big offensive thing then, was it?

So, from your perspective,

-you didn't learn anything from school at all?

-No.

I'm not ashamed of it, but when I left school... Well, I can't write now.

-You can't write at all?

-No, not at all. I can't write, I can't spell.

-Can you read?

-Yeah, I could read when I was about 27.

And I can read anything now.

My maths is pretty hot!

-That's pretty quick.

-So you're good with numbers.

-Yeah, for sure.

I'm really good with numbers.

'The jigsaw puzzle that is Chris Dawson was beginning to come together.

'But the fact that a multimillionaire owner of a massive retail empire

'left school with no qualifications, and without being able to read

'or write, was not a massive surprise to me.

'Because I'm partially dyslexic, but didn't find out until later in life.

'Research claims that entrepreneurs are five times more likely

'to have the condition than the rest of the population.

'Dyslexics tend to struggle in mainstream education,

'but they flourish in other environments.

'So I wondered where Chris really learned his early lessons.'

-School was a bit of an enterprise for me.

-You used to bunk off?

-Yeah.

And where did you go?

When my dad would take me, I would go to a market or a fairground

and he'd stand me somewhere, anywhere, selling peaches or...

..toffee apples or things like that.

We were toffee-appling and we ran out of apples,

so he made me put the sticks in these oranges

and we toffeed the oranges with the rind on.

Of course, everybody is looking at our toffee apples, the biggest.

He made me shout out, "Biggest toffee apples!

"Biggest toffee apples!" when they were oranges

and I was very young and when they bit into them through the toffee,

they'd taste the orange, "Oh, my God!"

My dad would say, "You'll acquire that taste."

-He had an answer for everything.

-Wow.

No Trading Standards then!

'By swapping school for the market stall,

'Chris picked up the sales skills

'that have played a major part in his success today.

'I'd be delving deeper into his early days as a market trader later,

'but now, I'm on my way to Mark and Mo's first shop in Poole.'

-Mark, Mo, good to see you. How are you?

-Hi, lovely to see you.

-What a beautiful day out there.

-Fabulous, isn't it?

-So this is it.

-This is it.

-Your first original, which opened...?

-In 1995. What a team!

Wow, 17 years ago.

I always feel like my granddad in here

because he had a grocer's store down in Dorchester.

'I was keen to see if Mark and Mo felt comfortable

'swapping the back office for the shop floor.'

I find this really interesting because it's a bit like

a cake or a cheeseboard sort of style

where you take a slice of what you want.

Yes, we've arranged it to be exactly that, like a cheese shop,

so you can graze through the different ranges that we have.

Is there a lot of research in this?

-There's research, but not necessarily...

-Or is it instinctive?

It's not market research.

What we tend to do is, we do about 20 - 30% new product every year,

so we bring it out, we do it and then we have a look

and see what people think of it and then we keep on talking about it.

We might tweak it a little bit, but often the first thing is the best.

So when... That's what I find interesting.

You bring a product out to market when you don't even know

-the customer is going to like it.

-Absolutely.

We do not... I mean, the idea is, basically,

if you only bring out things that people are expecting,

then you keep on bringing out a new flavour of shower gel

because people don't have

the imagination beyond what they can see.

That's not rude, that's just the way it works. So if you...

What you're trying to do is get them to experiment, try new ideas out,

expand their thinking with regard to what they're looking at.

You're quite bold then. Would you describe it as bold?

-Testing doesn't...

-Being driven by what your customers want,

you're clearly not driven by that at all. You're driven by...

I'm driven by what my customers LIKE, but not by what they WANT.

We're doing something right.

I think that too much timidity and too much messing about

once you are clear as to what you're doing

is part of the reason for failures.

Mark's bullish approach to business was a side of him

I hadn't seen before, but one that I needed to explore.

He certainly doesn't lack self-confidence

and having done some research, I knew that like many entrepreneurs,

there had been tough times to conquer

before arriving at such a confident view on how to run the business.

Time to tackle Mark and Mo's boom-and-bust beginnings

and their roller-coaster relationship

with one of the biggest names in the cosmetics industry.

So, Mark, tell me how it all began with The Body Shop.

Well, I was broke and living off Mo.

I was trying to flog my goods here, there and everywhere.

I thought I could probably sell them and then I spotted a little piece in

Honey Magazine about someone who had a shop, one shop, in Littlehampton.

I met Anita Roddick in her first shop.

She placed an order for £1,000-worth of my product, which was amazing

and that was the start of a really lovely and exciting relationship.

And it grew and grew and grew into...

Well, I thought it would be the only order I'd get and then it grew

and then, obviously, her and her husband Gordon

grew The Body Shop into a really large concern and I had...

Well, WE had a really exciting ride with them

and a hell of an education in, you know...

I'd see them as true entrepreneurs, as far as I'm concerned.

What, even over and above yourselves?

Absolutely, yeah, because of the drive, the speed, the fanaticism.

The whole thing worked on argument. Even if you phoned Anita and Gordon,

they would both lift up the extension,

and they'd argue even about who was answering the phone,

so if you wanted to get an idea through,

you had to argue it through,

you had to argue with her, you had to argue with him,

the whole thing would go through and then,

if it was robust enough to stand that kind of pressure, off it went.

By 1984, Mark, Mo and Elizabeth Weir's company,

Constantine and Weir,

were Anita Roddick's biggest suppliers.

It was a lucrative relationship, but one that would end abruptly.

In 1992, Roddick decided to buy Mark and Mo out

and bring production in-house.

The Constantines sold their cosmetic formulas

to The Body Shop for £9 million.

Interestingly, any products that Roddick hadn't bought

were funnelled into a new mail-order company, Cosmetics To Go.

You carried on with Cosmetics To Go.

We did, which lost a pound every time we sent out an order.

It lost a pound every time you sent an order out?

But we worked on the principle...

It was the dot-com principle, that if you get to a certain size,

your overhead will be covered by...

You've got economies of scale across the business as you grow?

-Yes.

-And what...?

-We never achieved it. We went bust.

-You went bust.

Cosmetics To Go never sold enough product to bring

the cost of production down.

As a result, Mark and Mo failed to make any profit,

burned through almost all of The Body Shop's £9 million

and, eventually, the company went bust.

I think it just highlighted what we didn't know at that point.

We had been a contract supplier, basically, to The Body Shop and then

suddenly, it's a whole different game when you take on your own business.

You take on more responsibilities

and I don't think that we really understood that.

Some of the basic business practices, we weren't good at,

-we didn't pay enough attention to.

-How did you feel?

Em... Yes, shame was the word that came to mind.

It was quite difficult. Basically, I was hiding away at home,

-so I tended to come in the back door.

-So it affected you?

-You wouldn't go through the front door?

-For a little while.

It's like losing a child, isn't it?...

-That's how you felt?

-At the time, I felt angry,

but I also felt somewhere between raped and robbed.

I felt that, especially with the receivers coming in...

I don't think we were good business people before that.

I think there are arrogant, I think we had too long a party

and I think, as a result, we were much more contrite,

we were much more focused and we did a much better job the second time.

It could be argued that competing against an ex-client

isn't terribly principled, especially one so established.

But Mark and Mo have clearly learned from their mistake,

one that's left some emotional scars

and shapes how they approach business today.

Buoyed by my breakthrough with Mark and Mo, I thought it about time

to delve into Chris Dawson's market trader DNA.

-Give me a two-minute pitch to sell that watch to me.

-Right, OK.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was due for H Samuel's,

it got lost and I found it.

The police said, "What are you doing pulling that string?"

I said, "You try pushing it."

The retail value of this is in excess of £900.

Half price is 500. What do you mean, I can't add up?

£500, 480, 380, if I turn round I'll charge you £300.

You shove your legs and arms up.

Madam, do you mind if I make it cheaper?

Have you got two? I wish I did have.

Listen, I wasn't that quick when I stole it.

First hand up there, quickly and sharply. Bang, I'll take £50.

-That is...

-But we'd adjust the figures to whatever. It can be...

I could be selling a Royal Worcester dinner and tea set,

I could be doing Gucci with two Gs.

It's good. It's a bit like a mix between an auction at Christie's,

but it's being done by Del Boy Trotter.

Basically, you're actually appealing to somebody's greed really

because they certainly don't want it when I start to sell.

Chris is clearly a great salesman,

but I wondered whether things could have turned out differently.

As well as linking dyslexia and entrepreneurship,

research has found a link between undiagnosed dyslexia and crime.

Feeling devalued at school, young people with the condition

often seek self-esteem via deviant behaviour.

If you hadn't gone down a sort of a legitimate way to make your money,

do you think you could have dug into the sort of criminal world?

I certainly don't recommend anybody steals,

-but I am fascinated with crime. I always wanted to rob a bank.

-Did you?

Yeah, I did. I didn't do it, by the way. They robbed me instead!

And to be rich that fast was the reason I was going to do it.

-And did you ever get caught by the police?

-Yeah, I did, yeah.

-Several times.

-What made you stay the right side in the end?

Well, I've ended up being pretty good at my job and I was earning

so much money as a spieler, there was never any point,

considering the fact that the money was ridiculous that I was earning.

Chris moved from market stall to department store in 1988.

He bought his first premises with cash

and claims to be remarkably debt-free today.

Have you got an investor at the moment?

No, no investors, no borrowed money.

We all know that actually I should have some debt at this stage,

but I haven't.

It's a little bit old-fashioned, but do you know, we open, we buy,

we build, we sell. Buy, build, sell.

See, that's amazing, isn't it?

Starting life with no debt,

growing a business with no bank loans or debt,

getting a business up to several hundred million in income,

no loans or debt.

No, 400 million this year it will top, but that's the warm-up act.

I've got to get that billion-pound turnover, that's the target.

(A billion pounds?)

-Yeah, a billion pounds.

-Do you think you'll do before you die?

Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah.

I don't think it will be tomorrow, but it won't be long. Yeah, for sure.

Ambitious is an understatement!

No matter how much time I spend with Chris,

the surprises just keep coming.

Mark and Mo are as keen as Chris to grow their business,

but they aren't just doing it for their own benefit.

This is Simon, my son, he is one of our perfumers.

'The couple's three children all work for the company.

'Simon, the eldest, is based here in the lab.'

I'm seeing a little bit of the likeness there.

Yeah, obviously I'm slimmer and better looking.

Don't you think they're old enough to retire now, though?

They've been old enough to retire for years, in my eyes, but...

-You can't kick 'em out fast enough!

-They are getting on, aren't they?

Certainly, I thought that,

but I'm pleased that you said it rather than me.

I now know the truth. The son!

Yeah, I'm really the secret of the success, I think.

You know, that's the way I feel anyway.

You're letting him get away with this, aren't you?

We have many conversations like this because we actually work

sitting opposite each other here, so it's always quite interesting.

-But you clearly have got a close relationship, haven't you?

-Yeah.

And did you have this sort of relationship with your family,

-with your father?

-No.

-You don't?

-No.

-You don't have this bond?

-I didn't know my father from the age of two. So...

-Wow.

And now, he must be proud then?

-Sorry, is this a bit...?

-This is a very difficult subject.

I'm going to see my father for the first time next week.

For my 60th birthday, a close friend did a family tree

and, through a whole series of very clever pieces of thinking,

he traced my father, basically, in South Africa.

So it wasn't to do with me looking.

I have looked before and didn't find him

and evidently, they've looked for me and didn't find me.

That's quite amazing.

Do you think that your father, then,

if you haven't seen him since you were two,

do you think that's influenced your life in any way?

I think it's defined my life.

I think it's defined everything about my life.

Why do so many entrepreneurs have these kinds of situations

in their backgrounds and their childhoods,

severe illnesses, parents splitting up, something that really does

sort of create a jar in a child's development

and then go on in that way?

They call it the entrepreneur's wound, you know.

Many people have got far worse circumstances then I've got.

Does your father know how successful you've become?

It's embarrassingly irrelevant.

-It was only pertinent when he didn't exist.

-Yeah, yeah.

I'm not interested in, you know, why did you do this?

He's 80, I'm 60, we don't need that, but just to be with him.

I think it's a great privilege, again.

Even if I'm in the last act of his life, at least I'll know him.

Many entrepreneurs I know have a historical chink in their armour.

With Mark, it's his dad. Chris, his dyslexia.

As a result, these complex characters become more creative,

come up with lateral solutions, or are driven to prove themselves.

My time with Mark, Mo and Chris was nearly up.

I'd appreciated Mark and Mo's refreshing honesty and,

after getting to know Chris over the past few days,

I wanted to make sure I was getting the same from him.

It's been an adventure, if I can call it that.

You are clearly an amazing trader.

You've got incredible energy, an insatiable appetite for business,

but everything that you've sort of told me...is it really true?

Well, the bits that I want to be true are true, you know.

Maybe we bend a few letters here and there,

but I think a good slug of it is true.

The figures, as I say, they do the talking.

The MFI deal, I'll go back to that, that was an education.

You keep going on about that.

-It was that really true, it was a number under three million?

-The...

Yeah, I'm going to say it was south of £3 million.

You bought it for under three million?

That's the bit that I just feel... That's like legendary!

Your negotiating skills are unreal as well?

Well, you know, if they are still breathing, I'll carry on.

And if they're screaming in pain, so long as they're making a noise

and breathing, their eyes are fluttering,

I will carry on and carry on and carry on.

I'm like an alcoholic in an off-licence.

I've got the keys to the store and I feel sometimes like a pirate

swinging through the window on a rope

going, "Here I come, I'm having this, whatever happens."

It's the excitement and thrill.

And what's the future going to hold for you?

I want to do this as long as I can breathe and, you know,

I'm also looking for investments.

I'm looking to get a few quid here and a few quid there.

If I won the lottery, that wouldn't make much difference,

but if you give me more money than I could ever spend,

I'd go and start another business,

so if this went, I'd only go and start something else.

Because I was thinking to myself,

if I was ever going to put money somewhere,

after the first few occasions of us meeting, I was thinking,

-"You know what, 100 quid, he'll turn that into 200."

-Yeah.

Then I thought the other day, "If I give him half a million quid..."

-Then I'd start to get a little bit nervy.

-You would get nervous?

Would get a return on it?

Now I've got to know you, I'm thinking,

"Yeah, there's no question, I'd make money by giving you half a million."

But if I was to give you a couple of million and invest...

-Yeah?

-What would happen?

Well, I'd turn it into four, five, six. What do you want?

How much do you want? How much risk do you want?

But we don't call it risk, do we?

We just call it business, so what are you punting for? Two?

-Two, maybe three.

-Maybe five?

I'd be pretty useless

if I couldn't turn five into ten and then we need to get into the teens.

I quite like this bit. How much have I got in the money bank?

Have you got it with you?

'Chris is a phenomenal businessman.

'His appetite for making money is as big as his personality.

'Both he and the Constantines have built hugely successful businesses,

'but with completely different attitudes and approaches.

'Mark and Mo have impressed me with their ability to

'blend their ideas and profits in an industry not known for its idealism.

'But in our final meeting,

'I wanted to put their principles to the test.'

One thing I've been dying to ask you,

is to have... be so successful,

and be quite edgy and controversial at the same time,

you must have had some pretty harsh decisions to make at some point.

Sometimes you have to be brave.

Invariably, each time you're brave, afterwards you look back

and think, "That wasn't so difficult."

So if you received a huge, huge offer, financially,

from another massive cosmetics company, would you take it?

-No.

-I wouldn't have thought so.

Unless they come along with a complete, you know,

embargo on animal testing of their products.

That would be a nice negotiating position, wouldn't it?

-I don't think it's possible, I think that...

-So no amount of money?

-No.

-A billion pounds, you wouldn't?

-No, because it's...

We're in a lovely position

where we already earn adequate sums from our business.

We like to make a contribution,

we're delighted to be in a position to be able to make that.

That's it, that's the endgame. There isn't another endgame beyond that.

-And you're not just saying that?

-No, of course we wouldn't.

The fun is in the business, isn't it? Working the business.

And you have your children coming along, working...

If you sell, you wouldn't know what to do.

Is not not knowing what to do.

The big issue for ethical businesses...

Well, hardly any of them have managed to fund their

businesses up to a reasonable size without losing their businesses.

The thing about our ideals is they are actually our ideals,

they're not something that we've just borrowed,

so therefore they stay constant.

For me, it's been an absolute honour to meet you

because it's quite nice to see successful people do well

but yet make such a difference.

-That's very kind of you, thank you.

-Yes, thank you.

Mark and Mo's passion for their business

and unrelenting belief in their principles is refreshing.

Together, they've created a global brand from humble beginnings,

learning from a spectacular mistake.

To be successful, you do have to believe

in the most extreme circumstances,

you do have to believe in your product

and believe in the people around you and believe in your customers.

You just have to hang in there, even when you've got dreadful doubts.

The Constantines now know how to make money and how to hold on to it,

but they care about the people that work with them

and use what they earn to make a contribution to the wider world.

We do try hard to present an honest face and to...

What we say is what we do and so on,

but that should be normal, in my opinion.

Chris is relentless, determined and motivated by personal wealth.

I think you need an amazing focus and the focus

has got to be so strong, you could walk across the beam.

He's learned all he knows from his days as a market trader

and has scaled that model up to a massive size.

But I don't see Chris being satisfied

with what he's achieved any time soon.

You will need strength as a person because every day is not rosy.

And you would need drive.

I'm going to convert drive.

I would want to call it greed. You need greed.

And last but not least, you will need that thing called talent.

Chris and the Constantines' stories are both fascinating and inspiring.

They demonstrate that successful business models

are not shaped simply by profit and loss,

spreadsheets and sales,

but by ethics, ideals, perseverance and personality.

-'Next time...' How are you?

-All right, mate, how are you?

'I'll meet multimillionaire plumber, Charlie Mullins,

'who has learned that to survive in business, you have to be tough.'

-Tell me when you're ready.

-I'm ready, yeah.

So what happens if an employee doesn't adhere

-to something in this bible?

-They go.

-Really?

-Yes.

Nice to see you. 'And Lord Karan Bilimoria,

'whose business journey has been far from easy.'

Was there a point where you ever felt this is too much?

Several times you feel it's too much,

but you never think of giving up. Never, ever.

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