The Entrepreneurs
A weekly deep dive into global business. Inspiring stories from startups to legacy brands in hospitality, design, fashion, and retail.
Latest Episodes
Dark and stormy
Failure is an experience that no entrepreneur wants to encounter, yet one that pretty much every one will. This week we explore what happens when your luck runs out and the best ways to bounce back. Mark Jennings is the founder of Shaken Cocktails, a cocktail-subscription start-up. Shaken, however, no…
Aegean Summit: how to build a media brand
Amid paywalls, platforms and advertising woes, few media outlets have cracked the code required to create a successful, sustainable and profitable business model. The Aegean Summit, a new conference in Athens, is looking to the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean for guidance on best practice. We meet with…
Distill Ventures
How do you build a profitable new brand in the world of spirits? Launched in 2013, Distill Ventures helps brands navigate those early years with investment and mentoring. Since then they’ve invested millions in promising new spirits companies. But what makes a drinks brand stand out? What’s more crucial: marketing…
Growth
The team behind popular London-based menswear brand Percival open up about their business challenges and discuss their new crowdfunding campaign, and we profile Bontoni, a family-run Italian company looking to make its mark in a sector where established names loom large. Plus: we visit the Bluemond Farms in Serbia to…
Ambition and vision
Ryan Holiday went from talent agent to American Apparel’s director of marketing in his early twenties – then the wheels came off. Now older and wiser, Holiday is here with a lesson: ego is the enemy. Ross Bailey has something to share too. His vision was to create an Airbnb-style…
Company culture
How do you measure company culture? How seriously should a CEO consider it and how can it be improved? This week we meet Didier Elzinga from Australian start-up Culture Amp, a company revolutionising the ‘people-analytics’ industry. Meanwhile, with the news that advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy has created an emotionally…
The Entrepreneurs: Live
In this special live episode of ‘The Entrepreneurs’ recorded at our Marylebone HQ, Monocle’s Daniel Giacopelli and Andrew Tuck are joined by the visionaries and creative leaders behind inspiring, successful businesses. From industry giants and family outfits to one-man-bands and clever upstarts, we find out how to build a strong…
Thread
London-based online start-up Thread is one of a growing number of companies entering the burgeoning fashion-technology space. It combines the know-how of a stylist with the computing power of an algorithm; the aim is to help men find the perfect piece of clothing and deliver it straight to their door.…
Planning for the long term
Founded in 1860, Sunspel was a supplier of high-quality underwear to the British Empire; come the 21st century, Nicholas Brooke explains how he and his business partner reinvented the brand. Meanwhile, the oldest traditional family business in London’s Spitalfields is Gardners, now run by fourth-generation Paul Gardner, who is also…
Small and slow
In our adrenaline-fuelled world of billion-dollar unicorns and big exits, it’s easy to forget about the little guy. This week’s episode is all about the small and the slow – the advantages of David over Goliath; the tortoise over the hare. ‘Small is Beautiful’, a conference held in Edinburgh last…
