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•12 The 100 Greatest Business Ideas of All Time
telephone account and 4.25% on the Internet. Such are the cost savings on offer to
the banks for people carrying out their own transactions.
When all is said and done, First Direct and its followers are a huge step for bank-
ing mankind who, only 15 years ago, ‘did not join the bank to be a salesman.’
Ask yourself
• Are you using the telephone to its maximum extent for customer contact?
Idea 6 – Bringing sex to the living room
Why is it that women talking about sex and, for example, watching male strippers
find it absolutely hilarious, whilst men in strip clubs are completely quiet and, a lot
of people would say, sad? The movie The Full Monty, about a group of unemployed
Sheffield steel workers who set up a male stripping group, was a tremendous success
and had cinemas all over the world falling about laughing. Whereas the MP and
minister Glenda Jackson is complaining about a lap-dancing club opening in her
Hampstead constituency. Yes, that’s right, Glenda Jackson. You probably remem-
ber her railway carriage-dancing in Ken Russell’s movie The Music Lovers and bed-
dancing with Oliver Reed in Women in Love.
The Ann Summers lingerie and sex aids shops first opened in 1972. They now
have 17 high-street retailers in key cities across the UK, attracting 1.9 million cus-
tomers. But it was the move into selling the products to women through parties held
in prospective customers’ homes that earns it a place in this section.
Ann Summers is a family company owned by the brothers Ralph and David
Gold. It was David’s daughter Jacqueline, however, who came up with the parties
idea. At the age of 19, whilst starting at the bottom in her father’s firm, Jacqueline
recognised a new channel for Ann Summers products when she was at an Avon/
Tupperware style party. Not only did the move offer a new channel, it gave a new
