Keeping the Plates Spinning - the Success of the Goodwood Brand

Entrepreneurs are explorers and being one is a way of living. Keeping many plates spinning at the same time challenges the nimblest entertainer, but for entrepreneurs who often times have more ideas than is good for them, the job of preventing those plates from falling to earth is tricky and never-ending.

For Lord March, CEO of the Goodwood Group of Companies, much of the phenomenal success of events such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed came as a big surprise! Eighteen years on and Britain has the biggest car culture event in the world with rich potential to export the idea to other continents. Revival has become another hit and so too has Vintage @ Goodwood, an engaging combination of music and fashion across five decades of UK culture appealing to a fertile combination of generations.

The Goodwood success story was at the heart of an inspiring and engaging talk at our Entrepreneurship Society tonight. The business now employs more than 500 people and claims top-line revenue in excess of £50 million per year. Crucially for the local economy, the multiplier effects are estimated to be particularly high not least because of the success of the Goodwood group in establishing and running their own hotel and a fully-organic farm – the largest of its type in the south of England. Innovative entrepreneurs change lives forever and change communities. We were fortunate to meet up and engage with a business leader who is completely passionate about his job and who has relentlessly pursued and taken risks with activities that have made the Goodwood brand recognisable with motor sport fans and other around the world.

Crucial to the success of the Goodwood brand is the continued growth in demand for live events – we see this in sport, in comedy and music festivals and in many other aspects of UK life and culture. Yes there is always a danger of saturation point being reached – music festivals are perhaps more prone than most to this excess supply. But when the event taps into a genuine nostalgia for times past and when the production values are top quality, the result is spectacular. Consumers become part of the film, enthusiasts bring their own passion to an event and real social networks take root.

A commitment to what is authentic, historic and real has been at the heart of the Goodwood expansion over the last twenty years, and a desire to take risks – to create events and see if they take hold. We have tried this at Tutor2u on a smaller scale but in a similar spirit of “if you build it they will come” - notably with our Entrepreneurs Live events this autumn and a wider range of teacher CPD events that don’t mimic the rabid commerciality of the exam boards.

Tonight’s meeting with a flamboyant British entrepreneur has left me even more wedded to the idea that, in business, one should grasp opportunities are the right moment and never let go.