I first came across Stelios when I started flying from London to the south of France on a regular basis with easyJet. The airline had only been going for a couple of years and the service was patchy to say the least. If a problem occurred in the morning, that problem would multiply so that when I flew in the evenings, delays of a couple of hours were not uncommon. Throughout all these problems however, the owner of easyJet, Stelios, would there at the check-in queue reassuring passengers. He would then wander up and down the aisle during the flight, asking for feedback and invariably if there was a delay, he would offer everybody (139 with a full plane) a free drink. Given that a Gin and Tonic was approximately £3, it was a costly freebie and probably wiped out his profit on that flight.
Stelios, then floated his airline on the stock market and it has gone from strength to strength, certainly in terms of number of routes and the inventory of new planes they leased.
Today, on my occasional forays to the UK, I travel with one of their competitors, Aer Lingis who, in my opinion, offer a much superior service. Seat allocation when checking in. Large, leather seats. More legroom. No hassles with slightly overweight baggage. But Aer Lingis only operate out of Gatwick which is ideal for my current flights. Any other destination and I will be back to easyJet.
Why am I writing about an airline and it’s founder? It was an article I read the other day about Stelios in which he described his approach to money. He was given a sizeable loan by his shipping-magnate father (£500m is the estimate) and went onto to become a sizeable competitor to his father’s shipping line, selling it eventually for £1.4b. Makes nonsense of the old adage about how you make a small fortune. You start with a large one – ha ha!
It was one of the things he said in the article which prompted this post. He said that when he became successful, he changed his clothes (I can only assume he meant he improved his dress sense) and got rid of his Porsche. Well, I don’t know about the Porsche but I was always amazed when I saw Stelios wandering about on the Monday flight to London. Here was a billionaire who dressed liked he’d slept in his clothes on a park bench. He was so untidy. He is a big man and it’s sometimes difficult to dress big men but this guy was the proverbial tramp. The back of his suit trousers hadn’t seen a press since the suit was first worn. His jacket was similarly creased but he was always niceness itself, even signing autographs for stupid passengers who thought he was some sort of celebrity.
Since those early days in easyJet, Stelios has gone on to found a number of other ‘easy’ businesses. The ill-fated easyInternet Cafés. The easyRentacar which seems to have disappeared. He’s now doing easyCruises but again, I haven’t seen the distinctive orange cruise ships which used to stand out like a beacon when we looked down to the Med.
He also founded, if that is the correct word, an easyBus service which took passengers getting off his planes at Luton and ferried them into London for a £4 fare. I once followed this billionaire (he claims he’s not worth that much) off of a Luton bound flight and watched him selling his £4 bus tickets on the concourse at Luton Airport. Ever known a billionaire to do that?
Anyway, if you’ve got 10 minutes to spare, read Stelio’s thoughts on money and entrepreneurship in the URL’d article and remember what Dell Boy once said – ‘d’ya know, the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur’!!!
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