Dominic McVey
A self-made multimillionaire and still only 23. What’s the secret?
TOP OF THE CLASS
FROM HIS APARTMENT high in Melbourne’s swanky Eureka tower, 23-year-old Dominic McVey could be forgiven for acting as though he was master of all he surveys. A millionaire by 15, ranked in the Sunday Times Rich List by 20 and now brokering deals across the globe, his progression from teen tycoon to fully fledged entrepreneur is nothing short of astounding. But complacency is something he’s in no danger of suffering: “I could easily sit back now but I seem to be on autopilot and it keeps taking me to new places.”
With an estimated fortune of £7m and homes around the world (including a couple in London, the south of France and the US), McVey currently juggles several international businesses. The most notable is Cosmagenics, a cosmetics branding and distribution company with a value of around £3m, after trading for just two years. He’s certainly come a long way since he started his first venture, selling micro-scooters from the bedroom of his London home aged just 13.
Since his childhood McVey seems to have had an internal programming mechanism for making money: buying gadgets from Japan and reselling them to friends, organising under18 discos and using his father’s credit card to deal in shares. However, it was those micro-scooters that fired up his entrepreneurial spirit. An online search for credit card company Visa, misstyped as Viza, took him to an American site selling the scooters.Won over by the product, McVey tried to talk the company owners into letting him have a demonstration model that he could take orders for in the UK. As it happens, the company refused but offered him six scooters for the price of five. He took them up on it, sold five scooters within a week and put in an order for 10 more.Within months he was selling as many as 25,000 a week and, two years later, was making over £1m. A retail star was born.
“When I started I just wanted to earn enough money to be in a band,” says McVey, who comes from a down-to-earth background (his father was a musician and his mother a housewife) and seems embarrassed about how often people want to discuss his wealth. “I knew no one would hire me, so I thought I’d start a band myself. When I earned my first million I was only really bothered about the fact that I was still too young to drive.”
It was his ambition to work in the music industry that also brought McVey his first taste of failure. He invested heavily in a festival and had sold several thousand tickets when 9/11 happened and the company he was dealing with pulled the plug. Losing £250,000 knocked him for six but he now sees it as a positive lesson learnt early on. “I had a big ego at that point,” he admits candidly. “I thought I was invincible, so when I lost all that money it was pretty tough.”
Undeterred, McVey had already begun to cast around for ways to gain back his fortune when he was approached by Simon Tate, the owner of a pharmaceutical firm, who wanted McVey to help push the company into new markets. Tate claims that in McVey he could see a dynamic young entrepreneur with a new way of approaching business.
The pair jointly started Kew Health and Beauty and began manufacturing cosmetics. “We started the business from zero,” says McVey, “but our first contract made us £250,000 and after three years it was worth between £8m and £10m.”
Things might have continued in that vein but, two years ago, a restless McVey spotted a gap in the market for a product distribution venture in the luxury sector. “We wanted to find new markets and could see the Middle East was an exciting area. My partner already had a pharmaceutical business in the region, so it made sense.”
The result of his ambition is Cosmagenics, which within two years has become one of the top three luxury brand specialists operating in the Middle East. “We did it as a trial, with no investment to see if it would work and from day one we were making money.”
The firm imports and sells quality cosmetic brands, such as Philip B haircare, Jelly Pong Pong make-up and exclusive fragrance range Solange Azagury-Partridge through a variety of outlets that includes shopping malls, duty free concessions and department stores. Though the company is run from London it no longer operates in the UK, concentrating instead on the Middle East, US and Australia. “We closed our UK distribution operation because there was too much competition,” says McVey. “It’s difficult to make your mark in Britain unless you have a lot of money.”
Doesn’t he have a lot of money? “Yes, but I still can’t compete with the two or three top brands that own the British market or the likes of L’Orèal. For every £1m I throw at something they can throw £10m.”
Despite being outside key European sectors, McVey sees no reason, even in an economic downturn, why the company shouldn’t continue to grow. “Very expensive products are actually doing well. For example, people want scents that are more exclusive and not ones that you’ll find everyone else wearing.”
Cosmagenics currently sells in 25 different locations within Kuwait and the UAE, and McVey believes there is still room to expand within the Middle East. “There’s a huge amount of money being pumped into the region and you can see just how many opportunities will be there in the future. The Middle East has a fantastic retail culture but despite being well established it’s still a speculative market in many ways.”
However, he admits that he initially found doing business in a different culture difficult. “When we first entered the Middle East it was a slow and painful process because it’s such a different operating structure to what I was used to in Europe. The way of doing business there is still very traditional and it can take up to eight months to launch a product. Though I’m certainly not expecting everywhere to be like the UK.”
The experience of running businesses across several cultural divides also came in useful when McVey attempted to break into the notoriously difficult and fickle music business. Having never lost his desire to work with performers, the entrepreneur, who now lives the classic nomadic rock star existence himself, manages several musicians in various countries, including Australian artist Kaz James. Not only has McVey managed to get James regular appearances on the global festival circuit and helped him record an album but in 2008 he brokered the biggest deal of the year with Sony BMG in Australia.
McVey doesn’t deny that he enjoys hanging out with recording artists but he also sees there’s a need to make it work financially. “I have to adapt and find new ways to keep my business alive,” he says. True to form, he is already looking for other ways to engage his talents. “In five years I’d really like to go into politics. I have ideas that keep me awake at night and that I’d like to share with people.” Looking at McVey’s past form, who would dare to say he won’t make it? www.cosmagenics.co.uk
