Gift Focus - Jul/Aug 2019 (Issue 114)

50 Bespoke service We spoke to Simon Willis, owner and managing director of Global Luxury Brands, about all of the ways the business has changed in six years When was Global Luxury Brands established, and what were your reasons for setting up the business? I started the business in 2013, having left Royal Crown Derby after almost 20 years. It felt like the right time to move on, with the company having new owners and a very different direction. When I left, I was unsure quite what direction my business would take, and it has certainly not gone where I thought it might. The journey has been hard but huge amounts of fun. What have been the key milestones in the business? We incorporated at the end of 2013, which was a key first step. At the beginning, I was working on brands that were, in the main, for specialist tabletop projects. One key milestone was making contact again with Jorge De Rosa, the owner of De Rosa in Uruguay. I had met Jorge while working in the U.S. in 1999, and we had kept in touch as friends. After leaving RCD, he asked me whether I would be interested in being the agent for De Rosa in the UK, and after 12 months of saying no, I decided the time was right and took the task on. At our first trade show, we had no customers, but that had changed by the end. We are now the distributor, and the business has grown well. This move took us down the road of working with other high-end giftware lines like Herend, Cmielow and Goebel. Another key milestone was my wife, Janet, joining the business this year. It is great to have someone else in the office and another point of view – not that we always agree! What was your background before you came to GLB? I always intended to make my career in the motor industry and did a degree in economics under the sector expert in the motor industry at University College Cardiff. After a brief spell with Natwest, I started at Denby in 1985, and it is an industry that I have never escaped from! After Denby, I moved to Royal Doulton, then Lawleys by Post and then on to Minton and Royal Crown Derby. In 2000, when RCD was sold to Hon. Hugh Gibson, I was the sales and marketing director and helped Hugh to turn a subsidiary of Royal Doulton into a standalone business, with sales in most of the key markets of the world and a highly successful operation in the U.S. Describe your product offering. Today GLB’s business is split into two parts. We have a number of brands that can provide a bespoke service for tableware, giftware, Simon Willis (left) with Alan Morgenroth of Goviers of Sidmoth