Richard Branson on Virgin’s Branded Ventures

motul antics acceptance by both British
and American travelers who didn’t seem
to mind that the same company that just
signed the Rolling Stones spurred all of
us on to start breaking the rules in a
few other areas we began to develop the
idea that we could take the same and we
could apply to different businesses with
different partners only linkage between
the companies being the name itself the
philosophy of how we do business the
culture and the famous Virgin brand
values of quality value for money
innovation competitive challenge and fun
over the years we launched 250 other
companies and every time we entered a
different market sector the same
questions were asked the financial
journalists wanted to know if we could
keep all of our businesses afloat the
marketing ones kept speculating that
what we were doing was impossible and
would stretch the delicate Virgin brand
too far we took a very head on approach
to these critics we didn’t ignore them
but we listened to them and then we were
batted them on all fronts by continuing
the steady growth and expansion of the
businesses simply put best way to tell
them they were wrong was to show them
they were wrong or tears on I’m happy to
say roger has gone on to grow very
successful businesses in sectors ranging
from mobile telephony to transportation
financial services leisure music holiday
is publishing and retailing and we
employ almost 50,000 people in 30
countries a business philosophy that we
now call Brandi venture capitalism