Life of Jonathan Elvidge
...get Shop. Before the end of the year he had opened two more and he now has twenty-five. His aspiration to be an entrepreneur came after a number of diversions and make-or-break situations. He didn't take his final school exams, joining instead the local telephone department as an apprentice telephone engineer while he decided what to do. While he was digging holes he had to be rescued when the pneumatic drill he had been using carried him down the road. He learned another lasting lesson climbing up telegraph-poles. He discovered that if you stand in dirt on the way up, then you get it on your hands on the way down. 'Holes and poles taught me to understand people from the ground up,' he says. Elvidge Elvidge worked his way around the company and eventually moved to sales. 'Selling was not new to me. The brush business had sharpened my communication skills and confidence.' He rose to be a star salesman, but found inspiration for his own plans from books about how entrepreneurs started in business. His plans for the gift shop were accelerated when he fell out with a manager. He drew up a business plan for his new venture, spending his holidays at gilt conventions. ‘People used to think, "here comes the imaginary shop man again",' he says. 'I got friends at work to carry out market research and used the office laser printer to make letter headings with my new logo.' Elvidge's persistence paid off. He re-mortgaged his home, raising enough money to fund his first shop. However, a newspaper article alerted his employers to what he was up to and he was told to choose between the jobs. He chose to leave the company, but when h...