The influential entrepreneur behind the Richer Sounds hi-fi and electronics business Julian Richer has been awarded an honorary degree by The Open University for his contribution to British business and society.<\/p>\n
Today, the company\u2019s 50 stores and a thriving online business create an annual \u00a3200m turnover and Julian donates 15 per cent of this to charitable causes each year.<\/p>\n
In 2019, he sold 60 per cent of the business to an employee-ownership trust with a personal gift of a \u00a31,000 bonus for each year of service, which cost him \u00a34m. He has said it was the best \u00a34m he had ever spent.<\/p>\n
Richer Sounds is the UK\u2019s largest hi-fi retailer and has also been recognised by consumer association Which? as Retailer Of The Year for the past five years.<\/p>\n
Some of the charities he founded, along with wife Rosie, provide support to a range of valuable causes: helping people affected by anti-social behaviour and those in desperate financial need.<\/p>\n
He also founded \u2018Zero Hours Justice\u2019 to campaign against the use of zero-hours contracts imposed on workers against their will.<\/p>\n
Upon receiving the honour at a recent graduation ceremony in Harrogate, he said it was an \u201camazing honour\u201d. He continued:<\/p>\n
\u201cApart from being by far the biggest university in Britain what is more important to me is, as far as I can tell, you are the most inclusive and it\u2019s a real pleasure to be here.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He left the graduating students with three tips:<\/p>\n
\u201cBe determined. You\u2019ll note I\u2019m a small chap. I was rubbish at sport and I\u2019m average looking at best but I\u2019ve always been very determined and I strongly recommend that you keep going until you hit a wall and certainly that\u2019s my mantra and it hasn\u2019t done me any harm.<\/em><\/p>\n
\u201cHumility \u2013 I\u2019m sure you are much cleverer than the bosses you are about to go and work for but keep that to yourself and just demonstrate it by your energy and determination and effort.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
His third tip was this:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in business for 50 years and I\u2019ve been through a lot of ups and down, crises and recessions like the one we\u2019re in now, and business can get very tough.<\/em><\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot in these 50 years but the overall thing I\u2019ve learned is that it\u2019s all about the people. What I mean by that is that you will observe a hugely different output from people depending on how you treat them. I couldn\u2019t emphasise that enough. What goes around comes around. Be nice to people.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The influential entrepreneur behind the Richer Sounds hi-fi and electronics business Julian Richer has been awarded an honorary degree by The Open University for his contribution to British business and society. Today, the company\u2019s 50 stores and a thriving online business create an annual \u00a3200m turnover and Julian donates 15 per cent of this to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":24249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1094,1525,1640],"class_list":["post-24248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-honorary-graduate","tag-honorary-graduate","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}