Dr Hugh Padley

Born  in Edinburgh on 2 May 1946, Hugh Padley had a first class education at The Edinburgh Academy, Trinity College Cambridge and The  London Business School.

He built a career in business, holding a number of directorships but, although his education teaches risk aversion, always had a desire to run his own business,  This he achieved at the age of 40 when he returned to a former business, as Managing Director of Spode China, only to be made redundant six months later.  He acquired a business called Berkshire China for £1.  In five years, he built up the company from four employees to seventy and turnover from £160,000 to £2m during a period when the number of employees in the pottery industry declined by 30 percent.

In 1992, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and he sought an exit route which he satisfied by selling the company to the management five years later.
He committed himself to working with budding entrepreneurs. The organisation which took most of his time was ‘Young Enterprise’ – a charity which encouraged students aged 15 to 22 to understand business  through ‘learning by doing’ mostly by setting up companies and running them whilst still at school or university. He founded the North Staffs Area Board in 1992 and over ten years expanded the operation such that more than 90 percent of schools, colleges and universities in the area ran at least one of the programmes.

For 12 years he was also on the Board of Business Initiative, a subsidiary of North Staffs Chamber of Commerce. In 2003, Staffordshire University awarded him an Honorary Doctor’s Degree for his contribution to business and enterprise in North Staffs.

In 2000, Berkshire China went into administration to be bought back by the same management only to go into administration again in 2003. Hugh fought to try and save the company, he had established but was not successful.

This experience with success and failure, doing it and observing how others do it as well as doing it himself puts him a unique position to write ‘The Joys of Entrepreneurship, which is packed with help and advice for would be and existing entrepreneurs.

The Joys of Entrepreneurship £14.95