Few entrepreneurs can claim to have changed the sex life of an entire nation. But that's arguably what Jacqueline Gold has achieved. Her Ann Summers brand now includes 139 high-street shops and an army of 7,500 party organisers. It has the same brand recognition in the UK as Nike. And, this year, it sold around £150m-worth of lingerie and sex toys - including 2.5 million units of the "Rampant Rabbit," the vibrator made famous by US TV series Sex And The City.
This performance is all the more amazing when you consider that Gold has no formal training in direct selling, retailing or indeed business of any kind. From the beginning of her career, she told the London Business Forum, "this turned out to be a benefit because it forced me to rely on feedback... And [analysing feedback] is something we still do very much today."
The importance of customer engagement first became apparent to Gold when, in 1981, she went to a Tupperware-style fashion party and realised it was the ideal medium through which to sell sex products to women. In those days, Ann Summers was, like all its rivals, unremittingly seedy; and its board was exclusively male. Unsurprisingly, few women felt comfortable browsing its shelves. "I had the challenge of changing the image of the [whole industry]," she recalled. "It was the raincoat brigade going into the stores then, with only 10% of customers women, whereas today our parties are 100% women and, in our stores, 76% of our customers are women."
Gold began work at the company as an intern, purely because her father was the owner. And when she presented the board with her first business plan for the now-famous "Ann Summers parties", she found them decidedly unenthusiastic. "My idea was completely alien to them," she recalled. "One of them actually said: 'This isn't going to work, women aren't even interested in sex.'"
Fortunately, when her father later seized full control of the company, Gold was able to realise her vision, and quickly knew she was onto something. Within a year, she had recruited 500 people, and demand for her products was booming.
Today, a lack of customer awareness would be unimaginable at Ann Summers. Since she became a director of the company in 1987, Gold has stamped it out, and she now sends directors "back to the floor" on a regular basis, making them work the tills on Valentine's Day and at Christmas.
And, of course, attitudes have changed considerably: "Now you can buy sex toys in Selfridges. Liberty's have stocked them. Even Boots, until there was a media outcry, considered selling sex toys," Gold said. "I personally like Boots. It's where I go to get my aspirin, to get my toothpaste, or maybe some advice. [But] I don't know if I want them getting all sexy on me. I prefer to get my meat from a butchers, my shoes from a shoeshop and my sex toys from a shop that doesn't sell haemorrhoid cream."
Today, Ann Summers is a "true multi-channel retailer", she reported proudly, "with retail, party-plan, Internet, mail-order, vending machines and even on-line bingo." The majority of the group's income, 62%, is generated by its retail outlets, and another 29% by its parties. Only 9% is generated via the Internet and mail-order. However, Gold pointed out, the Internet is the fastest-growing area of business, "currently running at 63% up on last year." Overall, this is a golden goose that is still fat and healthy. "We have... 2,000 staff and 136 Ann Summers and Knickerbox stores," Gold concluded, before adding a telling comment: "...all of which are privately owned."
Even as an employer, Ann Summers is performing well. It was recently voted one of the top 100 best companies to work for by the DTI. Which, Gold said, is "something I'm particularly proud of." "Amongst our tangible benefits, our X-factor is laughter," she explained. "It's deeply rooted in our culture. Our sales conferences are outrageously funny, and I dare you not to laugh next time you go into one of our stores and turn on one of our toys for the very first time."
Admittedly, she said, the same bawdy humour might not be transferrable to every type of business, but the general point stands: "If you want happy customers then you certainly have to have happy teams." Gold pours great effort, she says, into making staff feel valued. And, as a result, she gets "longevity and loyalty". Her managing director, Julie Harris, for example, has been at her side for 22 years. "Obviously," she said, "like me she was only 12 when she started..."
However, running Ann Summers hasn't always been plain sailing and laughter. Gold had to challenge deeply ingrained prejudices, "mostly from stuffy old men on councils." And when she made the decision to transfer the party model to a new change of stores, she met heavy resistance from local planners and landlords in some areas.
Nowhere was this more true than in Dublin, where she chose to open a store in the main shopping area of O'Connell Street. The first sign of trouble she got was a letter from the local authority, "literally begging me not to open," so she invited them to tour one of her stores in England. The two male envoys, Alan and Keiran, subjected Gold to what she describes as a "bizarre" two-hour meeting.
"Alan wouldn't look at me throughout... in case he turned to stone or something. And Keiran, for some reason, just wanted to tell me how much he loved sex and how it wasn't his problem." It was soon clear, she said, that they "had their own agenda and it didn't matter what I said, I wouldn't convince them that Ann Summers would sit well in O'Connell street." Indeed, as the meeting went on, their tone became quite intimidating, with insinuations that Gold could be target of terrorism if she pressed ahead. "Basically, they were trying anything they could to put me off," she recalled.
Undaunted, she carried on planning the launch. Party sales averages were much higher in Ireland than in the UK at the time, and she was certain a Dublin store would be a big hit. But about a week before she was due to travel over to Ireland, things got much scarier. "I actually received a bullet through the post along with a threatening letter," she said. "But I'm one of those people for whom this kind of thing has the opposite effect. I just felt like I was being bullied."
The night before the opening, she was due to appear on a popular Irish chat show. And when she walked on stage, she saw Alan and Keiran sitting in the front row of the audience. It was a set-up. They had been invited on to the show to argue with her, and to issue her with a writ that would force her to cease trading. But fortunately, she said, she got "huge support from audience". The next day, 10,000 people walked through the door, and all of them signed a petition in protest at the council's action. The writ was duly overturned.
In 2004, a similar situation arose, albeit less threatening, when the government suddenly announced that Ann Summers could no longer advertise vacancies in job centres. "This was something we'd been doing for years," Gold explained, "so it appeared they'd completely rewritten the criteria."
Gold duly provided evidence to the Department for Employment that Ann Summers had never received any complaints about its job centre advertisements from either job-seekers or staff. She was also able to demonstrate that people had joined the company through job centres and had gone on to build a career in retail. Nevertheless, the dispute went all the way to the High Court.
Fortunately, the judge, Mr Justice Newman, was an elderly gentlemen who had "clearly been into the stores and done his research," Gold said. "And he thought the whole thing was completely ridiculous."
You'd think that after emerging triumphant from business challenges, legal challenges and the odd death threat, Gold would have put all gender stereotypes firmly behind her. However, she said, women and men still tend to ask her very different questions. For example, women typically ask:
- Was there a real Ann Summers? Answer: No. The first shop, in Marble Arch, was opened by a bon viveur nicknamed "Dandy Kim", who dated Princess Margaret and came up with name Ann Summers because he thought it brought to mind an "English Rose". He got into serious debt, and sold out to Gold's father who, as a publisher of adult literature, was a major creditor.
- What challenges have you faced? Answer: everything from straightforward sexism to death threats (see above).
- What are the key reasons for your success? Answer: Personal characteristics such as a passion for the brand, a gut instinct for business, strong self-belief, hard work, perseverance and, above all, courage, which she described as "not the absence of fear but the conquest of it." And corporate characteristics such as focus, genuinely valuing staff and "running the business like a small business" to keep it fresh and innovative.
Meanwhile, the questions that men most often ask her are somewhat different:
- Do you wear Ann Summers underwear? Answer: Yes.
- Do you test all the products yourself? Answer: No.
And a third question that she revealed with her answer: "Yes, size does matter."
