Stelios Haji-Ioannou quotes:

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  • When I opened the world's largest Internet cafe, certified by the 'Guinness Book of Records,' in Times Square in New York, I was live on 'Good Morning America,' and for me, that was an achievement.

  • All things start in California and spread to New Jersey, then to London and then throughout Europe.

  • On reflection, I am always pleasantly surprised when ordinary members of the public stop me in the street to say, 'Thank you,' I guess for making travel and other goods and services affordable to them.

  • My biggest mistake was when I started up easyEverything, a chain of Internet cafes. The idea that people would go to a shop to use a computer was revolutionary in 1999. It worked for a while, but cheap technology almost killed it. One silver lining of the problems I faced was that it gave me experience of turnarounds.

  • Passengers don't like changing planes. That means waiting time, stress, running around. There's a joke that the hub principle is supposed to have been invented by cargo firms. The baggage doesn't care where and how it's pushed around.

  • I like organised things. I don't like the corruption and slowness of Greece.

  • I've made mistakes in business, but none so big I couldn't recover and learn from them. The more you try to change consumer behaviour, the riskier it gets. You have to work out your potential losses against the obvious gains.

  • I'm not a communist - I believe in the free market and that entrepreneurs should be allowed to take risks because it creates wealth and jobs, but I draw the line at people risking other people's money. That's deplorable.

  • People are grateful when you make a difference in their lives. That is the essence of any successful business

  • As a self-employed person, the idea of a break is completely foreign to me. If I completely switch off for any period of time, I know I'm going to pay for it several times over. For me, it's a lot better and easier to stay in touch and know what's going on seven days a week than to switch off.

  • I have a feeling that there is a gap in the food retail market - a niche below some of the current budget operators such as Aldi and Lidl.

  • I didn't want people to say: Stelios does everything on the cheap at work, and in private he lives in the lap of luxury. That's not me. I don't need those status symbols. I don't need a private jet either when I can go everywhere with Easy.

  • Unfortunately I have no rags-to-riches story to tell. Money never played a big role for me. My parents just had it.

  • In America you can be Donald Trump, have a business go wrong, and file for Chapter 11. You can move on, and no one complains. When his casinos were in Chapter 11, he was still on TV telling people how to get rich. I had to persevere for years with easyInternet because I couldn't afford to hurt the brand.

  • The whole concept of the travel agent is absurd. They appear to be agents of the traveller but are actually agents of the airlines.

  • I think that my original drive as an entrepreneur was precisely that desire to get away from the image of the shipping magnate's son.

  • I've always been conscientious and hardworking. I've never wasted time.

  • I wanted to be my own boss. I was fascinated by airlines and how I could change travel for the average person. Then I wanted to diversify.

  • Sir Richard Branson is probably the best communicator ever. He was an inspiration for me - contrary to some reports, we've never done business together, although we did discuss an aviation venture very early on. I don't think easyJet competes with Virgin - we're in different areas.

  • I see easyHotel as one of the best, most natural extensions of the 'easy' brand from the airline. EasyHotel is raising money to accelerate growth at a much faster rate than I could have grown it as a private company, whilst enabling me to spend more time on my diversified portfolio of other investments.

  • I decided very early on that the way to make a difference in my life and in other people's lives was to give them services and products that are actually for the many and not for the few.

  • Failures teach you more, there's always something fundamental about them.

  • Successes are always unique and hard to copy. The fact that easyJet became a success is due to a mixture of talent and luck.

  • I'm sure there are managers who have had far greater financial success. But my companies such as easyJet have changed the lives of many people. We haven't just made flights affordable for a lot of people.

  • Greek shipowners like to boast, 'I bought ships at the bottom of the market, and now they're worth ten times as much.' It goes back to the days of Onassis and Niarchos competing with each other over who had the biggest fleet, the biggest yacht and the most famous girlfriend.

  • In simple terms, I realised that food is the most fundamental need for a person. In difficult economic times, people's priorities change, and they might be willing to do something that secures for them the lowest possible weekly food bill.

  • My cosmetic range, easy4Men, is not going that well. It's meant to be for the no-nonsense man, but now I don't know if the no-nonsense man exists.

  • America has its roots in a tradition of risk-taking pioneers. In more conservative Europe, if you fail in business or actually end up going to jail for it, you're finished as a businessman for good.

  • Even if someone is competent, it's so damned easy to crucify him as long as he's only working on his father's account. So at the beginning I certainly wanted to prove myself to my father and the rest of society. That quickly turned into a greater challenge. My lifestyle hasn't changed as a result.

  • I have to manage and protect my brand. For the details I can always hire people who can knuckle down much better. For that I need people who are different to myself. People who compensate for my weaknesses.

  • This industry attracts more capital than it deserves.

  • You can divide airlines into two camps: expensive and cheap. But I believe that we will only distinguish between long-haul and short-haul airlines in the future.

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