It took just over 24 hours for Stelios Haji-Ioannou to reply to an e-mail asking for this interview and the founder of easyJet was overseas at the time. When his reply came, there was no preamble or prevarication. Just one line suggesting a time and place and worrying if it was too late.
Dealing with the 39-year-old entrepreneur is a bit like dealing with his best-known business: direct, efficient, unexpectedly solicitous. And cheap.
When we meet, Stelios (he prefers to be called by his first name and has even patented the domain name) has just arrived from a weekend in Miami. Wearing a Euro-tycoon uniform of navy blazer, striped shirt and chinos, he looks pained at the suggestion that it could have been a holiday. He was investigating destinations for his year-old, low-cost cruise line, easyCruise.
PHOTO: AP
The son of a Greek-Cypriot shipping magnate, Stelios is comfortably one of the 100 wealthiest people in Britain, with an estimated fortune of £727 million. Yet he says he rarely takes holidays, preferring to oversee an online business that extends to buses, pizzas, mobile phones, watches and cinemas. Indeed, a man who has made millions out of cheap travel works hard to dispel any suggestion that he is a wealthy playboy.
"As a self-employed person, the idea of a break is completely foreign to me. If I completely switch off for any period of time I know I'm going to pay for it several times over. For me, it's a lot better and easier to stay in touch and know what's going on seven days a week than to switch off."
His bright orange card reads "Stelios: serial entrepreneur" and he likes to say of his desire to set up new businesses: "It's my compulsion. A serial entrepreneur is a bit like a serial killer but more respectable.
"I enjoy what I do," he says in his jovial way. "I work hard and that's why I don't take traditional holidays."
Cheap and cheerful
Since standing down from the executive team at easyJet, a company he founded at 28, Stelios has worked on creating a brand identified by its low cost and bright orange livery. So there are orange watches for as little as £3.45 as well as flights to see the World Cup for as little as £20.99 (before tax).
Few of the "easy" businesses started in the past seven years -- there are now 15 -- have done nearly as well as the airline. Some, such as easyBus, which runs between London and Luton, have been scaled back. "I'd be lying if I told you everything had gone according to plan," he says. "But then every single one is still in operation."
Conscious of the one-trick-pony accusations, he also reminds me that he sold Stelmar Shipping, started as a 25-year-old, for £1.3 billion last year.
Stelios, who came to Britain at 17 to study at the London School of Economics, does not behave like a venture capitalist by closing down struggling businesses. He believes the more firms there are raising awareness about who he and "easy" are, the better.
"It's a religion rather than science but the theory is that it wins share of mind, share of attention, makes a difference in more people's lives. When you build a brand, people will start paying for it."
Richard Branson inspired the younger man. The chubby Stelios dons a bright orange jumpsuit to publicize his companies and allowed TV crews to film the early days of his cruise line.
"I said about 11 years ago that I was going to build a brand that I would be proud of ... identify myself with it and take the good with the bad. I can't just go in and out. I'm a long-term investor."
Whereas the low-cost concept is easy to understand when it comes to flights, hotels or buses, it is, says Stelios, "slightly more complicated to explain easyCruise." The holiday atmosphere demanded on a cruise ship cannot be found on transportation "designed to be tolerated for two to three hours."
Breaking the mold
A US hotel consultant has been brought in. Out go hamburgers, fries and sports bars onboard -- "junk food is not something even Americans want to eat seven days a week" -- and in comes a small spa.
Are these changes a sign of failure? "No, they are in recog-nition of the fact that I've learned a lot from the first ship. It's all about trial and error. You can try and predict a lot by research but I'm very sceptical of it. It's all a big con," he says.
EasyCruise's move upmarket echoes what many analysts see happening at easyJet, which is trying to combat some of the lowest margins in the business with more "business-class seats."
He is very close to his family and flies to Athens once a month to see his parents. A man who has made millions out of low-cost services was born to great wealth -- his father bought him his first yacht and a Porsche when he was 18 -- yet he drives an orange Smart car and says he feels "embarrassed" about his two 19.8m yachts moored close to his Monaco home.
So why did the middle son of a man the Greek press calls the Tanker King choose to focus on low-cost services? "I decided very early on that the way to make a difference in my life and in other people's lives was to give them services and products that are actually for the many and not for the few."
Why? "Because it makes you more popular." But why do you want to be popular? There's a long pause before he says: "Because it's better than being unpopular. Better than being hated."
He says he is still haunted by "a traumatic experience in my youth." In 1991 Stelios and his father were jointly charged with corporate manslaughter after an oil tanker, the Haven, exploded off Genoa, killing two people with a further three never to be found. The two men were finally acquitted by the Italian supreme court in 1999 but not before the Haji-Ioannou name had been dragged through the mud.
"It was enough to make anybody think twice about what they want to do in life," he says.
Stelios is intensely protective of his private life -- leading to the sorts of rumors common for wealthy, unmarried men -- and appears, oddly, a little shy. Ushering the photographer and me from his tiny, untidy desk in easyGroup's north London headquarters, he is awkward having his photo taken. At the local restaurant, he tries to order our food twice.
Looking at the bill, I'm not at all surprised that we've managed to spend a sum total of £59. With service.
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