John Edmonds is a self-professed "Opportunity Exploiter" who has helped build numerous successful national businesses from scratch; several with millions of pounds/dollars turnover per annum. As John freely admits today, "If I've got a fault, it has been getting wrapped up in the passion and enthusiasm of business-building rather than take care of my own personal interests."
John's career started in the late 1960s, when in a period of just two years, he helped create one of the UK's first supermarket chains SupaSave in direct competition to the new Tesco supermarkets of that era. Shortly after that, John and his family emigrated to Australia.
Between 1971 and 1984, John was a founder member of the team who started and built the first 100 JeansWest stores in Australia; now the world's most successful casual clothing retail business with over 2,200 stores across Australasia.
In 1985, John took the idea in a friend's head about a heat-shrink plastic product that would protect the stiletto heels of ladies shoes and turned it into a product in national Australian high street stores within six months.
Between 1985 and 1987, John got involved with a team of electronic technicians which went from a back street electronic research laboratory, to an internationally recognised state-of-the-art artificial intelligence company with solid-state non-volatile memory. (meaning you don't lose computer memory when the power shuts off.)
Between 1986 and 1988, John helped transform the Stirling's Department store chain from consistent losses to ongoing sustainable profitability by greatly enhancing their customer service methods and product merchandising methodologies.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, John joined the Perth Zoo in Western Australia, and helped transform it from an unfashionable place that exhibits animals, to a thriving "Steward of Endangered Species" one of the world's most visited zoos per capita of population as a world leader in protecting many endangered species, including the orang utan.
From 1991 to 1995, John joined forces with the founder of JeansWest mentioned earlier, as a director of Lotus Retail Solutions. Just one of the many successful achievements was turning around an ailing national retail chain called Purely Australian owned by one of the world's largest companies, The Victoria Company of Japan, from loss to sustained profitability simply by adopting unique retail methods unheard of at that time.
In 1996, John was invited to work in Sweden for one of Europe's largest language companies to help build their English Language Business Skills programmes. Within two years, John was voted their top business development manager and Lecturer in English business skills, interculture, and presentation skills.
In 1998, John returned to the UK after 27 years of being abroad, and secured a position as the National Operations Manager for the UK's second-largest 24 hour emergency glazing company in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. He made immediate impacts on sales side of the business and their 24 hour help-desk team.
In 2000, John then joined the University of Huddersfield to build and manage a business incubation (business start-up) programme. At the pinnacle of his career, John personally helped start up and mentor over 250 businesses during this period, at an officially recorded 80% success/survival rate against a national backdrop of an 80% failure rate for business start-ups in the UK and world-wide. At least five of these businesses now have multi-million pound turnovers.
In 2008, and aged 59, John decided to start a business for himself for the first time in his life. He has started two businesses, one called Timetrapper Video Productions which exploits John's digital video hobby, and the other called Getaheadinbusiness. The latter will shortly launch in mid 2012 as an international subscription website with up to 250 short videos of John providing unique insights into how to start and build a successful business from scratch.
Today, John lives in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire and is married to Vivien, and has a son and daughter who both run their own respective businesses in Spain and America. Craig runs an web development and SEO business and The Marbella Guide in Spain, whilst Gayle owns a Virtual Office service in Georgia, USA.
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