A Bazaar Life: The Autobiography of David Alliance

by David Alliance

Overview

At the age of thirteen, David Alliance was taken out of school by his father and apprenticed into the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, where he learned the business skills that were to prove invaluable in one of the most successful business careers of modern times. In 1950, with just ?14 in his pocket, he arrived in Manchester in search of textile bargains, going hungry and sometimes forced to sleep on the street. Six years later, however, when he was still only twenty-four, he bought a loss-making textile mill, turned it around in six months and went on to build the biggest textile company in the Western world. At one stage his businesses, including his mail-order company, N Brown Group, employed more than 80,000 people. He did it through a mixture of incredibly hard work, creativity and nerve, and some of his takeovers, often of companies many times larger than his own, were breathtaking in their ingenuity. No obstacle was unscalable - his guiding principle all his life was that everything is achievable 'if you put your heart and soul into it'. Humble, charming and delightfully honest, Alliance's extraordinary rags-to-riches tale is not only that of a remarkable journey, but goes far beyond the world of business. Among many stories which have until now remained secret, Alliance tells of how he used the skills he learned in the bazaar to negotiate with the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam to allow the Ethiopian Jews to be airlifted to Israel, his friendship with the Shah of Iran and the first-hand insight into the infamous Guinness affair. In A Bazaar Life, written with Ivan Fallon, he sets out the lessons he has learned in a long career, and the principles that have guided him. Young - and older - entrepreneurs can learn a lot from his story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849548786
Publisher:	The Robson Press
Publication date:	02/05/2015
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	790,716
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

IVAN FALLON was for many years one of the leading financial journalists in Britain. He was City editor of the Sunday Telegraph and deputy editor and business editor of the Sunday Times, and was twice named Financial Journalist of the Year. He was CEO of Independent News & Media UK until 2010. His previous books have included the bestsellers Billionaire: The Life and Times of James Goldsmith and The Brothers: The Rise & Rise of Saatchi & Saatchi.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Preface xiii

Chapter 1 Kashan 1

Chapter 2 A Persian Childhood 13

Chapter 3 The Bazaar 29

Chapter 4 Manchester 47

Chapter 5 Thomas Hoghton 79

Chapter 6 Trouble at t'Mill 95

Chapter 7 Building a Business 103

Chapter 8 My Father 127

Chapter 9 Jack Menaged 139

Chapter 10 Mail Order 153

Chapter 11 Spirella 179

Chapter 12 Banking 195

Chapter 13 Toy Story 209

Chapter 14 Vantona 217

Chapter 15 The Shah 237

Chapter 16 Carrington Viyella 259

Chapter 17 Homa 283

Chapter 18 The Jews of Ethiopia 289

Chapter 19 Riding the Wave 313

Chapter 20 Nottingham 325

Chapter 21 Guinness 339

Chapter 22 Coats 347

Chapter 23 Good Times, Bad Times 359

Chapter 24 Tootal 365

Chapter 25 End of the Line 377

Chapter 26 N Brown 393

Chapter 27 In Sickness and in Health 397

Postscript 407

Index 419