Equity Magazine October 2017

WOMAN LEADER
In the Eighties, you’d likely find a poster of either Bo
Derrick or Don Johnson hung over the bedpost of
most pre-pubescent children. But ten-year-old
Glaswegian Michelle Mone had one of Richard Branson
instead. She began a neighbourhood newspaper delivery
business recruiting 17 other children and striking a deal with
the local vendor to supply only to her – she knew how to do
exclusive deals before she could enter secondary school.
Mone grew up rough. She was brought up by working-class
parents – her father mixed inks and mother was a home help
– in a tenement flat that didn’t have a bathroom. The death of
her brother when she was 10, followed by her father waking
up paralysed one morning, meant she had to drop out of
school at 15 and start working as a model to help keep the
family afloat. When she says during our phone conversation
that, “It doesn’t matter where you’re from, whether you have
the money or you don’t – if you are determined and have the
fire in your belly, you will succeed,” you know that she’s
talking from a position of lived experiences.
Her big business break though came at the age of 24
when, after a visit to America, she learnt about gel
technology that could be used in undergarments. “I started
Ultimo and invented the gel-filled bra that Julia Roberts
wore in the film Erin Brockovich. My ex-husband joined the
business three years later. Ultimo became the biggest
designer lingerie brand in the country.”
To start up her business, Mone put everything on the line
including mortgaging her house. But you don’t get to grow it into
a multi-million-dollar business without making a few mistakes
along the way. Which was her biggest blunder? “I suppose
trusting a distributor in Canada who ran away with £1.4 million
of my money. It was the best lesson I learnt because it really
made me grow up. I now only work with people I trust and I’m
always ten steps ahead thinking about Plan B, Plan C or Plan D.”
The working mom approached her personal life like she
did her business. She would draw up critical time path charts
for her three children and household chores were broken
down into KPIs. According to one report, she went into
labour with her third child during a board meeting – only to
reconvene the meeting four days later.
When it came to marketing Ultimo, Mone didn’t have
the swollen marketing budgets of major conglomerates.
Yet, she says, she delivered over $1.5 billion in press
coverage over the course of two decades. To do this she
often became the story. This included fronting a campaign
for British Airways and appearing on hit TV shows
The Apprentice and Masterchef.
A few of her self-promotion tactics did make her enemies.
In 2004, she fired Rod Stewart’s girlfriend Penny Lancaster
who was the face of Ultimo back then and replaced her with
Stewart’s ex-wife Rachel Hunter. The verbal retribution
from Stewart was swift, public and hard-hitting – he called
Mone a “manipulative cow” and said that he hoped “she’d
choke on her profits.” The spat provided fertile fodder for
gossip rags from the UK to Australia and America which
gave the incident – and Ultimo – prime coverage.
Mone eventually sold her stake in Ultimo in 2014 to one
of the world’s biggest intimate apparels company, MAS
Holdings in Sri Lanka.
She was subsequently given an OBE by the Queen but
wasn’t ready to settle for a retired life just yet. Around this
time, she moved from business to politics. “My parents
always said, ‘Never get involved in religion, politics or
football.’ I got involved in politics because the former Prime
Minister David Cameron asked me to help him with the
Scottish referendum three years ago. I campaigned to keep
Scotland part of the UK. It was a long battle, but we won.”
The victory meant Mone was instantly elevated in
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EQUITY