The Sun: (25.06.08)

Meet the man who has gone from market trader to millionaire…Chris Dawson has gone from being a Del Boy market trader with the gift of the gab to a multi millionaire with the golden touch. The cheeky chappie became the main attraction at outdoor markets with his perfect pitch for selling everything from gold-ish candelabras to Royal Doulton-ish dinner services.

But now Chris has established himself as a legitimate businessman with 35 branches of his thriving out of town discount department stores known as The Range (www.therange.co.uk). From chocolate bars to barbecues, he stacks it high and sells it cheap – offering unbeatable value for money to his millions of customers.

It’s a remarkable rags to riches story as Chris admits he left school in Plymouth, Devon with no qualifications. He only learned to read when he was 17 and still hasn’t got much further than being able to write his name. And yet Chris reckons he’s worth about £150 million and he is constantly thinking about the next big deal. He has just about finished filming a TV business show for Channel 5 about the Seven Deadly Sins.

He says: “My one is about greed. But if being successful is being greedy, then I’ll happily hold my hands up to that.”

Chris, 56, has his headquarters in Plymouth where he opened his first store 20 years ago. On his desk is a small model of the Del Boy character’s famous Reliant Regal yellow three wheeler emblazoned with “Trotters Independent Trading. New York, Paris, Peckham” – a reminder of his early years spent selling out of a suitcase on the local streets.

Wife Sarah is managing director of The Range and she looks after much of the buying. Chris explains: “I met Sarah outside a pub 28 years ago where I was street trading.

“She looked great. I sold her a watch, which was a tenner. I said because I liked her she could have it for £8.99. But she only had a fiver. So I took that and it gave me an excuse to see her again.

“I bumped into her 2 months later and she was with another guy. I reminded her she owed me four quid and the rest is history. But it would have been a helluva lot cheaper to have let het off the money!”

Chris rattles off his market patter and is a TV star in the making. He has perfect comic timing and relishes the prospect of becoming the next Alan Sugar.

The Range boasts thousands of mid price home and garden products plus Chris says it is the UK’s biggest retailer of arts and crafts supplies. His stores employ 3,500 staff and the business turnover is in excess of £200 million a year.

Daughter Lisa, 27, and son Chris, 25, both work for The Range and the 150 head office staff thrive in a family environment.

But while everyone gets on with their various jobs, Chris is still very much a hands on boss. He drops in on stores and loves nothing better then chatting with staff and having a laugh with customers. Don’t be surprised if he starts trying to flog you something in the aisles. He is a natural dealmaker and loves the cut and thrust of taking negotiations to the edge and beyond. Chris is confident that the current downturn in the economy will open up a wonderland of opportunities.

He predicts: “There’s never been a better time to expand. I can pick and choose exactly which locations I want to go for next. And if I don’t get the deal I want, I just walk away. That’s not being bigheaded – its just good business sense.”

Already Chris is busy opening The Range in Halifax, Peterborough and Truro, then he has plans to open 3 superstores in London later this year. And to make the journey easier, Chris has splashed out more than £1 million to put 12 trucks on the road 24 hours a day, distributing the company’s 65,000 different products across the country. The only problem was he didn’t want the empty lorries going back to his distribution depot in Gloucester.

So he set up a waste management business which means the drivers load up with tonnes of waste, such as cardboard, from his own stores and others to be reprocessed at a new processing plant he has built at the depot. It was while he was rapidly opening so many new stores that Chris hit on another moneymaking idea of which Del Boy would be proud. Three years ago, he decided to design, construct and fit all his new stores using his own team of shop fitters. That little number has been so successful that they are now working for big names such as Burberry, Levi, Lush and Tie Rack.

Chris admits he is something of a workaholic – even though he never realised what the word meant. He has only ever known to work ten to 16 hours a day and his mind is continually thinking about a dozen deals at once.

Holidays are spent in the south of France where the couple have a villa in Cannes. But lounging on the beach one day, Chris decided there was only so much sun he could soak up. So he decided to buy some land and build more villas. He says: “It all depends on who’s buying. At the moment I've got a lot of Russian clients. It must be all that oil they’re pumping out. But i'm not proud – I’ll take anyone’s money.”

Last week Chris picked up an Entrepreneur Of The Year award from top accountants Ernst and Young. The gong was handed over by former Tory Minister David Mellor who jokingly asked Chris not to sell it! But selling is in his blood. Even now Chris admits he rarely leaves the house without a couple of watches or bottles of perfume-ish which, he’ll try to flog or trade against a meal.

His biggest fan was always his mum, Elsie, who passed away at Christmas. A couple of years ago she was interviewed on TV about her son. Asked to describe what he did, she replied: “He flogs things – but he does it very well.”

And Chris has this advice for any wannabe multi-millionaires with a business idea. He says: “Make sure you grasp the spirit of what you want to do. Have a very strong work ethic and make sure your business plan say on it: Go Like Hell. Oh, and don’t forget to wake up every morning thinking how am I going to improve on yesterday.”

Chris knows he has never conformed to business traditions. He remembers walking into a one multi million pound business meeting with Alex Simpkin, one of his top boys, without a briefcase or even a single document.

He recalls: “We were up against a team of six highly paid flunkeys who where there to screw us into the ground. I just went in and for six minutes blinded them with mathematical wizardry. At the end of it they agreed to all my terms.

“We walked out and Alex said the presentation was brilliant and that it must have taken me months to plan.

“I said I hadn’t had a clue what I was going to say until I walked through the door. Alex said, “Well, that’s bloody magic.”