David Gold - Business
Growing Business - Issue 45
David Gold oozes success - and not just out of his initialised diamond cufflinks. Of humble East End beginnings, he's accumulated a £500m fortune, has a fleet of private jets, co-owns a newspaper, is the chairman of a Premiership football club and recently bought the oldest existing FA Cup for a cool half million. At 68, he could be forgiven for enjoying the easy life. Ten words in his company and you realise that's not on the agenda.
"I have got such a burning desire to carry on," he insists. And by 'carry on', Gold's not talking about merely keeping his businesses ticking over. He's currently busy restructuring Gold Group International, he and his brother Ralph's holding company. Gold Star Publications, the adult magazine and puzzle book company that has been so lucrative, is subject to a management buy-out, enabling Gold to focus on expanding Gold Air International, a luxury private airline, and the group's 'jewel in the crown', Ann Summers.
"There's such enormous opportunities for Gold Air and Ann Summers to grow," he says "It's exciting and I want to be part of it. It's the same as when I started my original business all those years ago, once you see something really special you give your all to it." For Gold that ethos has already seen the collapse of a marriage - his biggest regret - and now
it's impinging on his retirement; that's assuming there was ever going to be one.
It's not that Gold can't let go. He just knows there's bounty to be collected. Look around you: Adult channels were the fastest growing TV genre in Europe in 2004, two of the best selling weekly magazines in the country differ little to top-shelf titles, society makes celebrities of promiscuous nurses and shops that previously had blacked out windows and were derided as places of shame now sit unashamedly on our high streets. When you own the leading chain of such shops and a national newspaper that draws its revenue from the adult industry, you know the market's ripe for profit.
Indeed, Gold's decision to part with his adult publishing company suggests there's more money to be made from the increasingly acceptable face of the industry. He's welcoming of the Nuts and Zoo phenomenon - "they've made the public more comfortable with the product" - and credits them with helping win his campaign to get the Sunday Spoil and Daily Spoil, which he co-owns with David Sullivan (also co-owner of Birmingham City Football Club), stocked in Sainsbury's stores.
Gold is determined to strike while the consumer is turned on. Ann Summers is opening 20 new stores and refurbishing another 20 each year. "It's three successful companies in one, and that gives you great potential," says Gold, referring to the company's combination of retail outlets, of which there are currently 126 in the UK, party plan business, which is the
