Bernard Ashley (businessman)

Sir Bernard Ashley (b. 1926) is a Welsh businessman and engineer. He is the widower of Laura Ashley, and was her business partner from the founding of their fashion-textiles-centered business.

An engineer with a love of trains, planes and boats, Sir Bernard Ashley is often portrayed in the media as a businessman instead of a designer - but he has a huge loe of colour and design.

He has interests in Laura Ashley Holdings and the country-house hotel Llangoed Hall. Ranked 796 richest person in the UK with a fortune of £60m in fashion and hotels by the Sunday Times Rich List. He lives mainly in Brussells, but has houses in Hay-on-Wye and France.

Laura Ashley plc

In the early 1990s, Laura Ashley plc was suffering from a combination of overexpansion of its retail outlets and dependence on what had become an overly complex and costly outsourced network of manufacturers. In 1991, American Dr Jim Maxim became the CEO at Laura Ashley, after pressure on the autocratic Sir Bernard. Married to business author Shoshana Zuboff, author of the book Smart Machine, published 1988, the couple had met at Harvard, and he later hired her as a consultant at Thorn EMI. His first child Chloe was born soon after, as was a son Jake in 1995. Over the next two and a half years, Dr. Maxmin led a series of changes, fixing problems in manufacturing and logistics that foreshadowed principles of The Support Economy. For example, he entered into a strategic alliance with Federal Express, forming a sort of proto-federation, aimed at improving distribution for close to 500 Laura Ashley stores. The alliance was established as a 10-year partnership, but it was relatively open-ended, premised on trust. The objective was to be able to supply 99 percent of Laura Ashley’s merchandise to customers anywhere in the world within 48 hours. The alliance replaced a legacy system that would route a T-shirt manufactured in Hong Kong to a warehouse in Newton, Wales, before sending it to a retail store in Japan. In 1992, Dr. Maxmin led Laura Ashley to its first gross profits since 1989, and in fiscal 1993, gross profits were expected to reach 12 million pounds. But in early April 1994, two weeks before his wife’s epiphany on national television, Dr. Maxmin abruptly resigned from Laura Ashley, citing major differences over strategy with Sir Bernard

Elanbach

In 2000, Sir Bernard set up Elanbach and requested that daughter Emma Shuckburgh (nee Ashley), to act as its creative director. Named after Emma's home in the Elan Valley near Rhayader, is based at Sir Bernard's five-star hotel Llangoed Hall near Brecon, will be sold in shops in London and Paris.

Emma admitted to the BBC that she was surprised to be asked by her father: Its very exciting. Its a realisation of a dream. I kept thinking my father would say "I have changed my mind. I was joking." He hasn't said no to anything, so it's all going in the shops. Having grown up watching her mother design, Emma says the job simply comes naturally to her: I did my first dress design for Laura Ashley when I was 14, I was complaining there was nothing I could wear. She said, "right, just design some stuff then." I don't feel I have to live up to some great thing at all.

The company launched it's first shop in Hay-on-Wye in 2001, and includes designs from Emma's daughter Lilly

Ashley Houses

Sir Bernard Ashley bought Llangoed Hall, seeing it as the place where he could fulfill his ambition to recreate the atmosphere of an Edwardian house party. He later replicated this in other locations, but sold the two American properties in 1999 to Orient Express Hotels

• Keswick Hall - in Charlottesville, Virginia - sold in 1999 to the Orient Express Hotels
• Llangoed Hall - near Brecon, Powys
• Perry Cabin hotel, in Talbot County, Maryland - sold in 1999 to the Orient Express Hotels

Trivia

• Annoyed author Louis de Bernieres at the 2002 Hay Festival, when he opted to travel to the festival by helicopter because he had no faith in finding a parking space. At the first clatter of blades, De Bernieres sallied forth with all the rage of Velisarios, the strongman in Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Sir Bernard did not do it again
• An admitted lover of colour, Sir Bernard's art collection includes portraits and works by Whistler, Augustus John and Walter Sickert

External links

• Laura Ashley company website
• brief on Laura Ashley
• [http://www.elanbach.com Elenbach company website}