Gerald Ratner is a British household name. He took over his family's jewellery business in 1984 which had at that time 130 stores. By 1990 it had 2,500 stores, 25,000 employees, annual sales of 1.2 billion and profits of 121 million.
Unfortunately he went down in history (he was then Chairman-Chief Executive of Ratners Group, the world's largest jewellery retail company which included H Samuel and Ernest Jones), when at a corporate speaking engagement in 1991 at the Albert Hall for the Institute of Directors, he described a sherry decanter (one of their products), as total crap.
Gerald Ratner is very much in demand as a business speaker and has also built an American business from scratch, building it to over 1000 shops in the USA becoming one of the few uk retailers to succeed on the other side of the atlantic. He now runs, the UK’s largest online jewellery business Gerald Online.
This is a truly inspiring and entertaining story of the 'Rise and Fall and Rise Again' of a man and his business.
