What do you do and how long have you been in your current role?
I’ve worked for myself since I was 20, with one business morphing to the next organically. It went from street trader to market stall holder, from manufacture in India to import/export, from indoor exhibition and outdoor events trader, and from mail order company to being a performer. Contraband was set up in 2004 following the birth of my son a year earlier. Today I run a very busy corporate entertainment and talent agency providing entertainment at more than 1,500 events in London to Jamaica and everywhere in between.
Where was your first job? What was the most important thing you learnt there?
I had various waitressing jobs, but I really learned my business lessons street trading whilst at Oxford Brookes University. I learnt so many things from picking the best pitch for trading, to learning my sales pitch in six languages, to upselling by selling jewellery at the same time as hair wrapping and offering henna tattoos to tourists during the Easter and summer holidays. I used to earn over £1,000 a week, with no outgoings as street trading was legal (although I did battle with the council for more than a year to change to law in Oxford to allow the ‘service’ of trading, rather than selling products on the street - i won).
How did you get from there to where you are now?
How long have you got? After university I flew to India with £1,000 and a rucksack to live off for six months. I ran a market stall in India and turned my £1,000 stake into £4,000 selling clothes to the western package tourists. On my return, I wrote a business plan and secured a £2,500 grant from the Prince's Trust. I set up my first stall in Portobello, swiftly followed by a stall in Camden and another in Spitalfields all staffed from people I’d found on Gumtree. In 1997 I began supplying bindis firstly to independents across London before I secured my first large contract with Miss Selfridge. This was followed by contracts with Tammy & Etam, New Look and Topshop.
Being Miss Selfridge's sole Indian supplier, I followed up with the first henna home-tattoo kit. My next step was taking a market stall to The Clothes Show, where I intended on selling products. As an aside, I took my tattoo design books along and a second henna artist, and on 1m x 2m stall in six days I took £6,000 in cash doing henna tattoos. I was the first company to take henna tattooing as a service into an exhibition space environment.
My business moved into doing 70 outdoor events a year from the Bristol Balloon Festival to the Three Counties Show in Malvern. At the height of the henna craze I had a team of 18 henna artists with three teams out across the UK. I then set up a henna website and began offering every form of henna product from seeds to henna I imported from the Yemen as well as offering myself as a professional henna artist for hire. I was still henna tattooing eight and a half months pregnant in the mud at outdoor events, but after the birth of my son I wanted the business to evolve into a Monday-to-Friday office hours-based company, so I could be a mum. I moved into an office when my son was three months old and he went to a full-time child minder. Within a week I had my first employee and rest is history as I morphed with unbelievable speed from an 180sqf office to 3,700sqf office with ten full-time employees and two interns. I’ve had no investment funding and have achieved everything through the income I’ve generated as the businesses have grown, albeit slowly in the early years.
Looking back, did you expect your career path to take the course it has?
Crikey no. The first business plan I ever wrote for my market stall, I optimistically thought I’d turnover £15,000 a year. I thought I’d spend the summer months running market stalls and then six months in India on a ‘buying’ trip, aka sitting in a hammock and enjoying my time off. Within nine months of trading I was employing more than 600 people in a village co-operative in North Delhi and I won the Shell Live Wire London award for my achievements.
Would you do anything differently?
I’m not sure I would. I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I’ve learnt from them and I wouldn’t be where I am today without the paths I trod before. Every experience good or bad has made me the person I am today and a business that I’m very proud of.
Who has inspired you along the way?
My dad has been my biggest inspiration throughout my life. My grandparents didn’t have much and grew up with very little, so when he became a father he was determined to give my brother and I the childhood he hadn’t had. My mum was diagnosed with cancer when she was pregnant with my brother and was given six months to live. She lived on borrowed time and sadly died when I was eight-years-old. She battled the cancer whilst my dad worked his way up the career ladder whilst making the most of every day mum was alive; taking us on skiing weekend holidays throughout the winter in Manhattan where we lived and long weekends around the US as he ran the Hilton chain across America when we were kids. My father was headhunted throughout his career and when he retired he was head of EMEA for Dunn & Bradstreet with only one boss in the US.
He worked 90-hour weeks, flying subsonic to the US on a Friday morning and supersonic on the return flight to be with us for dinner in the evening. My dad has shown me what a hard work ethic is and as a result I did have a very privileged upbringing but my father chose never to ‘give' us anything. I haven’t been given £5 from my dad and everything I have around me I have worked hard for, I have a great sense of value of money and I credit 100% my drive to succeed and my work ethic to my dad.
Is there a piece of career advice you’ve ever been told that has stuck with you?
When I was 11-years-old my best friend’s father who was a self-made multimillionaire entrepreneur, and was also very eccentric, held a large glass of red wine up in his hand and said to me "Archie, I’m going to teach you something very important about work and that’s minimum effort but maximum reward". That doesn’t mean work lazy, giving 10% and expecting 100%, it just means work smart.
What career advice would you give to your 21-year-old self?
I have a degree in history and anthropology but I’ve never used my degree. Had I known I would follow an entrepreneurial path I’m not sure I would have gone to university. Having said that, had I not been in Oxford I wouldn’t have started street trading, so I don’t really wish my life had taken any different path.
How do you wind down and relax after a hectic day?
At the moment with this hot summer I come home after being in our sweltering office and I put my bikini on and lie in the paddling pool with a beer in hand and listen to music. I also relax by dropping the roof on my 911 C4S and blaring Afrobeats and taking my car for a spin. I’m a complete petrol head and credit that also to my father. Like father like daughter, work hard and drive hard.
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