Business Soldier of fortune
John Madejski, founder of the Auto Trader empire, shares the secret of his success and explains why, at 65, he’s not resting on his laurels
Soldier of fortune
JOHN MADEJSKI FOUND HIS FORTUNE IN THE CLASSIFIED ADVERTS – FIRST BY SELLING THEM, AND THEN BY BUILDING THE PHENOMENALLY SUCCESSFUL AUTO TRADER EMPIRE
words: gavin bell
LIKE MANY SUCCESSFUL business ventures, it began with a simple idea. In his early twenties, John Madejski left Britain to seek his fortune in America and spent a couple of years roping long-horn cattle on a ranch and selling cars. Then he hit upon a money-spinner.
A friend in Florida showed him a magazine advertising cars for sale, illustrated with photographs provided by the sellers. Madejski recalled the maxim about a picture being worth a thousand words, and saw no reason why it could not be worth a thousand pounds too.
On his return to Britain, he launched a provincial version of the publication in 1976 with his princely savings of £2,000. It was called Thames Valley Trader, and at first it sold everything from art and antiques to houses, cars and even aircraft. Cars, however, were the biggest sellers, and, as the business grew phenomenally, he eventually changed the magazine’s name to Auto Trader.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he says with a wry smile. “But it took a lot of hard work – a lot of graft. It wasn’t easy.” It became the cornerstone of a worldwide publishing empire with 80 titles, and when Madejski sold the parent company 20 years later, the price tag was £260 million – of which he banked £174 million from his 67% stake. The annual returns on his initial investment are the stuff that small businessmen from Aberdeen to Zanzibar dream of.
By then in his mid-fifties, he might have been expected to rest on his corporate laurels and indulge in passions for expensive art and fast cars. No chance. At the last count, Madejski, 65, had about 20 companies – even he is not sure exactly how many – in publishing, commercial property, broadcasting and catering.
The mixed portfolio is part and parcel of his instinctive approach to business opportunities. “You never know what’s round the corner. The trouble with being an entrepreneur is that you always get excited about something new that comes along.”
It is a strategy that clearly works. His net worth is estimated at £350 million, placing him 174th on The Sunday Times Rich List. His assets range from a luxury hotel on the Galapagos Islands to a bottling plant in Beijing and an award-winning restaurant on the Thames.
And there’s also a Premiership football club. Even shrewd businessmen indulge in flights of fancy that owe more to altruism and a spirit of adventure than the pursuit of profits – which is how Madejski came to acquire Reading Football Club in 1990, when the team was languishing in the lower reaches of Division Two.
“It was just one of those things,” he says. “I wanted to put something back into the area where I began my successful Auto Trader business.” And put something back he did – in the form of a £40 million stadium in preparation for the club’s promotion to the Premiership this year, for the first time in its 135-year history.
These are exciting times at the Madejski Stadium, where the team known as ‘the Royals’ kicked off the season in August with a win against Middlesbrough. Their benefactor was as delighted as anyone wearing a blue and white scarf, but his tenure in the boardroom may not last much longer.
Promotion has brought a reality check on the cost of staying in the Premiership, and Madejski is appalled by the obscene amounts of money demanded by top players, their agents and retinues of hangers-on. “It’s not disenchantment, it’s just reality. It’s a very expensive place to be. If you just want to be an also-ran then that’s fine, but if you’re going to be serious about it you’ve got to have incredibly deep pockets. I don’t really subscribe to that. I’ve got Reading into the Premiership, which was my ambition. Now it’s time to move on, providing I can find somebody who can take it over, and a safe pair of hands to leave the club in.”
His approach to owning a football club reflects the driving force behind his success – fear of failure. He traces it to his childhood and education in private schools, where he never fitted in.
Born in Stoke-on-Trent, he was 17 when his name was changed to that of his stepfather, who had a string of fish and chip shops. “My parents, bless them, did their best by sending me to rather dubious private schools. It was not the most exhilarating time for me.”
The experience ruled out further education, so he drifted from school into what he calls “the University of Life”. He graduated first in selling encyclopaedias, then biscuits for Huntley & Palmers, before heading for California to work as a ranch hand and sell luxury cars to Americans, who loved his accent. Back in Britain he sold more cars, hair products, and classified advertising for the Reading Evening Post until the idea of the Thames Valley Trader dawned.
Lots of people have bright ideas, but few succeed as spectacularly as Madejski. So what’s the secret? “Tenacity,” he says. “It’s never giving up. So many people, bright people in particular, find an idea and they are full of enthusiasm. They get so enthusiastic that they move on to the next thing before they’ve completed the first.”
His advice to entrepreneurs is simple: “If you want something badly, go and get it. But you’ve got to really want it bad enough, and you have to make huge sacrifices to achieve it. No pain, no gain.”
Tough words from a man who describes himself as a soldier of fortune. The image of the lone mercenary fighting to survive in a competitive world has a basis in truth. “I have so many different companies, you just fight on different levels and try to get it right and try to push forward. It’s jolly difficult, but that’s what one does.” The fact that he has never married speaks volumes for his solitary nature, he adds, although he has two grown-up daughters, who are a great source of paternal pride. A relationship with Cilla Black seems to have been compromised by a glare of tabloid publicity. “We are very good friends and I hope we always will be, but the media rather messed things up for us.”
For all his talk of pain and gain, Madejski does not come across like the hard-headed tycoons of BBC 2’s Dragons Den. He is a soft-spoken, thoughtful man with a love of fine arts and music, who has donated generously to the Royal Academy and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
When Edgar Degas’ sculpture La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans came up for auction a couple of years ago, Madejski was transfixed by its beauty, snapped it up for more than £5 million, and promptly loaned it to the Royal Academy for display in its Fine Rooms – restored to splendour by a £3 million donation he had given earlier. And when the Welsh violinist Siân Phillips was looking for a decent instrument, he bought a £500,000 Stradivarius and loaned it to her.
“We have to feed the soul, and I get motivated by art and music,” he says. “We need to step back from the busy lives we lead and look at beautiful pictures from time to time. It is a very enriching process.”
Madejski says he suffers from “charity fatigue”, brought on by an endless stream of begging letters, but in Reading his philanthropy has benefited the university, a museum, an art gallery, and a school.
In recognition of his services to the community, he has been awarded an OBE and appointed Deputy Lieutenant for Berkshire. This soldier of fortune is not ready to hang up his lance, but when he does he hopes the balance sheet of his career will be positive. “For my epitaph, I’d like it if they could say I put in more than I took out.”
