Simon Woodroffe

Source: Technology Digital

Date :28/11/2007 15:07:48

The founder of YO! doesn’t think he’s good at everything but Simon Woodroffe OBE certainly is good at turning dreams into reality. But he told John O’Hanlon about his vulnerability too.

Having left school at 16, Simon Woodroffe would not describe himself as an academic, so it’s unexpected how strongly his intellect comes across. You can almost hear the clicking as his mind sorts out the question and analyses the information for his response.

But he see himself - and regards this as one of the main reasons for his acceptance by his peers in the business world, his customers and the public who have come to know him through television programmes like Dragon’s Den - as an ordinary bloke.

The 20 years or so that followed look like a story of survival in a world that generates a lot of casualties. He started out as a roadie and stage manager behind groups like The Faces, Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin before finding his talent as a stage designer. In the 1990s his first big break came with Rod Steward, leading to spectacular shows from Motorhead to The Moody Blues and culminating in the 1985 Live Aid bonanza.

His success as an entrepreneur came when in the mid 1990s he had the idea of Yo! Sushi, inspired by a Japanese friend.

Outrageous

It wasn’t its originality, he admits, because others had tried conveyor belt sushi before him, that had people queuing round the corner when in 1997 he opened his first restaurant in Poland Street. “I knew that it was very high risk. Restaurants are. Also I had put every penny I had in the world into it. But emotionally I did think it was going to work and that’s probably why I was able to do it.”

He returns to this motif often. For someone who has judged other people’s ideas, he admits that there isn’t really a formula for a successful new venture: what counts is conviction, though. “During a break in filming Dragons’ Den we pitched our own ideas to each other, just for fun. Of course the idea of conveyor belt sushi was laughed out of court!”

By then of course Yo! Sushi had made Woodroffe a great deal of money. He was not a restaurateur when he started it, so he had no qualifications or track record on the face of it. But his experience as a stage designer was, and has been since, a great asset.

But above all he was convinced it would work. “I sensed that it was a thing of the moment. It was something slightly outrageous or different. I simply believed that it was the new rock ‘n’ roll, and if I could use that to bring people back to restaurants then it would happen.”

He was sure of his idea, but not of its acceptance. It could have gone wrong, he admits. “But I also think that in that case I would have picked myself up and dusted myself off and, gone off and done something else until it did work. I really had nothing to lose!”...

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