Deposed jewellery king to tell how he came bouncing back

Jun 17 2008 by Alex Turner, Liverpool Daily Post

THE man who gave probably the most famous business speech in living memory will tell his personal story of success, failure and bouncing back.

Gerald Ratner joined his family business in 1966 and had turned it into one of the world’s most successful jewellery businesses.

He transformed Ratner’s from a company with 130 stores and sales of £13m to a public company with 2,500 stores with sales of over £1.2bn by 1990, with profits of more than £121m.

That was until he gave a speech to the Institute of Directors in 1991 when he branded one of his own products as “total crap”, and was swept up in a fierce media storm.

Forced out of his own company, which ditched the family name to become Signet, Ratner’s comments came at a huge personal loss, emotionally as well as financially.

He returned to the jewellery trade in 2004 with the launch of geraldonline.com which has become a successful online jewellers.

GERALD RATNER is speaking at 11.30am today, in the Presentation Theatre, and then joining the Live Debate with CityTalk in the Debate Zone at 1pm.