Times Online Reports: WHILE waiting to catch a plane at JFK airport, Sarah Doukas noticed a
waif-like 14-year-old girl in the departure lounge. Doukas gave her a
business card and told her to call if she wanted to become a model. The
girl’s name was Kate Moss. She joined Doukas’s agency the next day and
is now one of the world’s most successful models.
Doukas has always
done things her own way. Sent away to boarding school at the age of
seven, she quickly learnt to be independent and self-reliant. Her
parents had wanted her to go into a profession, but Doukas flunked her
exams and moved to London to become a model.
She said: “I was
put under a lot of pressure from my parents to be academic. As far as
my father was concerned, unless you followed medicine or law or a
conservative profession, you weren’t going to have a reasonable life.
But I thought, to hell with it, I’ll do whatever I want. I completed
one A-level and walked out of the rest. My father was furious. He
didn't speak to me for two years.”
In between modelling
assignments, Doukas started selling antiques from a stall in Kings Road
and embarked on a series of adventures. She went to live in Paris for a
couple of years to sell antiques in flea markets and then returned to
London to manage a punk band.
She said: “A friend in Paris
wanted to sign the band to his record company and had nobody to look
after them in Britain so I started managing them. I did everything from
driving the van to loading the equipment to setting up their gigs. I
didn’t get any sleep but it was a lot of fun.”
While
managing the band, Doukas met and married an American singer and went
to live with him in San Francisco, where she set up a children’s
clothing company.
When they returned to Britain four years
later in 1982 Doukas got a job as a trainee booking agent in a
modelling agency. She said: “I had always thought it might be quite fun
to do. I was delighted not to be modelling any more. I never enjoyed
being in front of the camera. I was always panic-stricken.”
After
seven years there, she realised she wanted to start her own agency even
though it would mean becoming a rival to the company she worked for.
She
said: “I knew my boss wouldn’t like it but I had this burning ambition
to have my own company. I felt bad about it but I was getting
frustrated because there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go within the
company and I knew I couldn’t stay there forever with someone in a more
senior position to me. My husband was furious that I was going to leave
my job because I was being paid very well.”
However, she took
no action to set up her agency until she had left her old job. “It was
a mad thing to do,” she said, “but I couldn’t go to sleep at night or
look at somebody at work and think I was organising something behind
their back.”
Once she had left she asked some accountants to
help her draw up a business plan and after much effort found a backer
who would lend her some money. However, just before the deal was
finalised, the brother of an old school friend called to say he had
heard about her plans and would like to get involved. It was Sir
Richard Branson.
It was not a situation most other
entrepreneurs would find themselves in. Doukas said: “Thank you,
father, for sending me to an expensive school. I shared a dorm with
Richard’s sister while I was doing A-level retakes. It is all about who
you know in this life.”
Despite having no money of her own to invest, Doukas was determined
to retain at least 50% of her company and so Branson agreed that his
private company would take the other half and in return give Doukas a
£250,000 interest-free loan for three years as well as buy a house in
Kensington for Doukas to use as offices.
Her modelling agency,
Storm, quickly became known for taking on only the best models. She
said: “We used to turn people down who were actually quite good because
I wanted to create a very elitist agency and work only with the
high-end magazines. I always think you have to strive for the top.”
Storm
also became known for finding models in the most unlikely places — and
for taking a chance on unconventional talent. Doukas discovered Liberty
Ross while shopping on London’s Oxford Street, and signed up Sophie
Dahl even though she was much larger than conventional models.
Business
went so well that in 1997 Doukas opened a second agency in Cape Town,
South Africa, and the following year also started up an actors’ agency
in London.
Now 49, Doukas has turned Storm into something of a
family affair — her brother Simon works for the company and her eldest
daughter Noelle is a booking agent. The agency now has a turnover of
£8m and employs 29 people.
She said: “There has been a lot of
luck involved. I was lucky when I started this agency that there was no
other agency starting at the same time and the economy was good. And
then I was lucky that when we went into recession I had low overheads
so we could spend money while other people were tightening their
belts.”
Doukas said she has been driven by the desire to prove
to her father that she could achieve success on her own terms. She
said: “I am not interested in money. It is nice to have a nice car but
it is not my prime motivation. Instead, I have a desire to prove
myself. I think I am terrified of failure. Also, I love what I do. It
is easy to come to work and do long hours if you enjoy it.”
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