Voted one of the Top 10 Best KEYNOTE Speakers by Global News, Gerald Ratner is the famous British businessman who built up his hugely successful jewellery company, before notoriously calling one of his products “total crap”, a mistake that lost him everything but made him a British household name. Ratner has now bounced back after building the UK’s largest online jewellery business Gerald Online, and he is in high demand as an entertaining speaker at corporate events, where enthralled audiences hear about the roller coaster ride of his life and businesses.
Ratner took over his family’s jewellery business in 1984, growing 130 stores to 2,500 by 1990 with annual sales of 1.2 billion, profits of 121 million and 25,000 employees. After an incredible rise to fortune, Ratner went down in history when he said his fateful line about his own product at a corporate speaking engagement in 1991 at the Albert Hall for the Institute of Directors, losing almost everything overnight. A lesser man might not have recovered from what is famously now known as “doing a Ratner”, but Ratner’s story didn’t end there, and he rediscovered his entrepreneurial spark to become one of the few UK retailers to build a successful business in the USA. He has since built the UK’s biggest online jewellery business online, and is in high demand as a hugely entertaining business speaker with an incredible story to tell.
He also written all about his story in his best-selling book Gerald Ratner: The Rise and Fall… and Rise Again, and relived his experiences in BBC 2 show The Boss is Back.
