Issue 16, February 2003
You can’t go into a branch of Boots, WH Smiths or a high street bank these days without being offered the chance to drive a Ferrari, fly in an air balloon or leave your stressful lifestyle behind for a weekend in an exclusive health spa.
Experiences are the order of the day and big business to all who deal in them. And the person we have to thank for this £120m plus market is Rachel Elnaugh, the woman who was just pipped to the post in the Veuve Cliquot Businesswoman of the Year in 2002.
Way back in the late eighties she was wrestling with the urge to buy the male members of her friends and family circle socks and other manly, but ultimately dull, presents. What she really wanted was to give them an experience they’d never forget.
And in the true tradition of entrepreneurialism she decided to take matters into her own hands, fill the void and make a pretty penny in the process. In 1989 Red Letter Days was born with £10,000 pooled together from the usual assortment of friends and family and 25,000 from her own savings. Fourteen years later the pioneer of the industry employs 150, has been in profit since 1992 and turnover of £26 million in 2002.
But the hook to hang the concept on was the red letter pack. The company needed something iconic, something that would become synonymous with an experience, Elnaugh says, adding that in focus groups it is still the strongest piece of brand collateral. “The key for us was, and is, to find an experience good enough to go into the red letter.”
Pinning down ‘experience’ operators is easier now than it once was when only 25 operators out of 100 in the first year saw any value in offering their wares to the public. “But once you’ve got a start you go back to the 75 that rejected you and chip away,” she says.
Back in 1989 it was just Elnaugh and a phone. The former senior tax consultant rose from office junior with no university education to handling entrepreneurial clients such as Terence Conran and Reject Shop founder Anna Vinton. But she had little to back her instinct that she could run a business and no industry template to base Red Letter Days on.
She left Arthur Andersen’s with the intention of travelling for six months, but came back after six weeks, impatient to get started. Somewhat surprisingly for someone who launched the experiences concept, she didn’t spend the six weeks bungee jumping or white water rafting in Australia. “I’m not really Anneka Rice, but can see what experiences will work.”
In fact she believes it positively helps to not be an adrenaline junkie as turning a hobby into a business brings a twist that would probably exclude mass interest. Instead she concentrated on securing packages covering the entire spectrum, such as sedate but luxurious trips on the Orient Express to high-octane and stomach-churning flights in fighter jets.