Monocle 24: The Entrepreneurs

The team behind popular London-based menswear brand Percival open up about their business challenges and discuss their new crowdfunding campaign, and we profile Bontoni, a family-run Italian company looking to make its mark in a sector where established names loom large. Plus: we visit the Bluemond Farms in Serbia to meet Branko Bajatovic, a former London management consultant who moved to Sopot to become a blueberry farmer.

Eureka is a weekly spotlight on business origins brought to you by the team behind ‘The Entrepreneurs’ and presented by Monocle’s Daniel Giacopelli. In this episode Lyn Harris shares early inspirations, her experience learning the art of fragrance in Paris and how she created successful brands Miller Harris and Perfumer H.

Ryan Holiday went from talent agent to American Apparel’s director of marketing in his early twenties – then the wheels came off. Now older and wiser, Holiday is here with a lesson: ego is the enemy. Ross Bailey has something to share too. His vision was to create an Airbnb-style company for vacant retail spaces and to connect them to people with good ideas. He shares the progress of his company Appear Here.

Jimmy Cregan of Jimmy’s Iced Coffee explains how he first discovered cold and caffeinated joys in Australia.

How do you measure company culture? How seriously should a CEO consider it and how can it be improved? This week we meet Didier Elzinga from Australian start-up Culture Amp, a company revolutionising the ‘people-analytics’ industry. Meanwhile, with the news that advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy has created an emotionally needy robot that roams the company’s Portland office, we profile this experiment in how artificial intelligence affects the workplace. Plus: is the grass always greener for the sun-starved cubicle dweller? We send our sound engineer to a goat farm to find out.

‘Eureka’ is a weekly spotlight on business origins brought to you by the team behind ‘The Entrepreneurs’. In this episode Daniela Castellanos describes her move from Colombia to London to sell bags made by indigenous artisans. However, things didn’t exactly go to plan; Castellanos explains how she navigated from failure to launch and grow an up-and-coming fashion brand.

In this special live episode of ‘The Entrepreneurs’ recorded at our Marylebone HQ, Monocle’s Daniel Giacopelli and Andrew Tuck are joined by the visionaries and creative leaders behind inspiring, successful businesses. From industry giants and family outfits to one-man-bands and clever upstarts, we find out how to build a strong brand for the long-term.

Presented by Monocle’s Daniel Giacopelli, ‘Eureka' is a weekly spotlight on business origins brought to you by the team behind ‘The Entrepreneurs’. In this episode Mark Dawson explains his journey from a lawyer with literary ambitions to a mega-successful self-published author with dozens of thrillers under his belt, hundreds of thousands of paying readers around the world and a side business helping other writers achieve similar success.

London-based online start-up Thread is one of a growing number of companies entering the burgeoning fashion-technology space. It combines the know-how of a stylist with the computing power of an algorithm; the aim is to help men find the perfect piece of clothing and deliver it straight to their door. Daniel Giacopelli discusses its business model with CEO and co-founder Kieran O’Neill.

American-born and London-based Jason Price shares highlights of a globetrotting life immersed in music and explains how he built Tarisio, the world's premier fine-instrument auction house.

Founded in 1860, Sunspel was a supplier of high-quality underwear to the British Empire; come the 21st century, Nicholas Brooke explains how he and his business partner reinvented the brand. Meanwhile, the oldest traditional family business in London’s Spitalfields is Gardners, now run by fourth-generation Paul Gardner, who is also a founding member of the East End Trades Guild launched by Krissie Nicolson in 2012. Krissie and Paul talk about supporting small independent businesses.

Presented by Monocle’s Daniel Giacopelli, ‘Eureka’ is a weekly spotlight on business origins brought to you by the team behind ‘The Entrepreneurs’. In this episode, entrepreneur Paddy Dickinson shares her journey from Missouri to New York, from helping to launch MTV Europe and MTV Australia in the 1980s to creating her jewellery brand Totem Adornments this month.

In our adrenaline-fuelled world of billion-dollar unicorns and big exits, it’s easy to forget about the little guy. This week’s episode is all about the small and the slow – the advantages of David over Goliath; the tortoise over the hare. ‘Small is Beautiful’, a conference held in Edinburgh last week, explored the ways in which we can give inspiration and ideas to the world’s micro-enterprises, solopreneurs and creative freelancers. We hear from the event’s producer Roanne Dods and journalists Alexa Clay, author of ‘The Misfit Economy’, and Carl Honoré, author of ‘In Praise of Slowness’.

Perfume designer Kilian Hennessy reflects on his rise within the fragrance industry and shares business lessons from his cognac-famous grandfather, co-founder of the world's largest luxury goods group: LVMH. Presented by Daniel Giacopelli, ‘Eureka’ is a weekly spotlight on business origins brought to you by the team behind ‘The Entrepreneurs’.

What’s the purpose of a business? What are its responsibilities to customers, employees and communities? We examine outdoor-clothing brand Patagonia as Rick Ridgeway climbs down a mountain to explain why sustainability is at the forefront of its massive growth. Meanwhile, innovation think-tank Nesta and the Startup Europe Partnership have ranked the best big corporations for collaborating with start-ups. We explore their findings with Nesta’s Chris Haley, Cisco’s Tom Yoritaka and Irene Graham from the Scale-Up Institute.