Gerald Ratner Case
Gerald Irving Ratner was born in 1949 in London, England into a gems and jewelry business family. At the age of 15 he dropped out of school and took a job in the family business and by the mid-80s he became the chief executive of the company. He built up an extremely successful chain of jewelers but achieved disrepute after making a speech at the Institute of Directors on 23 April 1991 in which he jokingly denigrated the companys products, which led to the near collapse of the company and ruined his career.
He made the following comments during his speech:
“We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, How can you sell this for such a low price? I say, because its total crap.”
He also added that some of the earrings were cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich but probably wouldnt last as long.
The speech wiped out around £500 million from the market value of the company as a result of plummeting sales as customers took their revenge by boycotting Ratner shops. Ratner was fired in November 1992 from his own company by the Exec Chairman he had employed and in 1993 the group was renamed as Signet Group.
He was reduced to nothing in a stoke and suffered from depression, ostracism and bewilderment. He applied for a job with 50 different companies, all of whom rejected him outright. Eventually, Gerald opened a health club in 1997 and sold it for £3.9m 3 years later. This transaction marked his comeback and then ventured into an online based jewellery business after a market research on brand recognition done by a fellow jeweller found that Ratners was still the most recognised name in jewellery. However, he had to name his name company as GeraldOnline as he was blocked from using ‘Ratners’ by his old company. GeraldOnline