easypizza joins the empire

Filed in archive Entrepreneurship on December 12, 2004

You have guessed it - who might be behind easyPizza - our regular guest here Stelios Haji-Ioannou. The Independent reports about the latest launch:

"Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the head of the burgeoning business empire easyGroup, will further extend his entrepreneurial reach next week when he adds a pizza delivery company to his portfolio.

Working on the same "demand-based pricing" that has applied to his low-cost airline, it will offer a pizza for a pound for those who order early enough, impressing some business analysts and appalling anti-obesity campaigners in equal measure.

The easyPizza launch comes a week after the easy brand took another step towards ubiquity when Mr Haji-Ioannou put his name to easy4men, a range of toiletries sold exclusively through Boots."

Also apparently most of the easy businesses are still in the red. Easycar is expected to run a profit this year only. I'm really not sure if applying the demand based pricing to each industry is really enough. Compared to the Virgin group it is pretty little value addition by itself. But however doing 16 companies in 10 years is quite an achievement. Hopefully they won't disappear to soon.

"Mr Haji-Ioannou, who has reduced his role in the airline to 41 per cent of shares held by his family, is concentrating instead on start-ups, many of which are still in their infancy and have yet to break even. The business model at easyGroup allows for three to four years before a profit can realistically be expected.

His easyInternet cafe is expected to break even this year, easyCar is forecast to achieve the same in 2005 and easyMoney makes a modest profit."