Rock bands are great fun, but can be "a terrible business", says Mark Fuller. In the early 1980s he managed a string of small British rock bands. "We had a couple of hit singles, but then a tour fell through and the record company went bust. We went from riches to rags really quickly."
Fuller returned to London broke and used his music contacts to organise club nights. Their success gave Fuller the cash and conviction he needed to try for his own club. He picked up a failing one that only had a few years left on its lease, got a very cheap deal, and with some help from his friends in the music industry, started attracting punters.
Sadly, his success was cut short when the lease expired, so he moved to a new venue in Bond Street. "I had built up a bit of credibility in the industry and people were prepared to return the favour." Thanks to some of his star performers, the venue soon became popular with big celebrities of the day, including pop group Duran Duran.
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"Making a bar popular with celebrities is all about creating an image, having the right attitude (which comes from the owner) and contacts." But once again, his strategy of targeting a cheap, tail-end lease forced him to move on after just a few years and open a bar in Putney, west London. "It was a big mistake. It wasn't high-end enough. I ended up with people dancing around handbags on the dance floor."
Fuller decided to move back to central London. "The trouble was, I had just got married and my wife didn't want me coming back from a night club at eight in the morning." So he opened a fashionable hamburger and cocktail bar located just off London's busy Tottenham Court Road. He also decided to invest in a longer-term lease.
His timing was terrible. "We launched just as Maggie Thatcher's Britain came crashing down around us." It was 1989 and recession-hit London was in no mood for expensive burgers and fancy cocktails.
However, by 1993 things were picking up and Fuller was able to move to a restaurant in Greek Street in Soho. This time he invested £250,000 in the lease and refurbishments. Unfortunately, though, over the next few years he got into another £500,000 of debt trying to prop up the business. Luckily, his landlord was nightclub owner, Paul Raymond, the so-called King of Soho'. "He helped me out a lot, both with advice and financial support."
Fuller cut prices and targeted bigger celebrities. As business boomed, he teamed up with an old pal, celebrity chef Marco Pierre White, to create Red Cube and Sugar Reef, two of London's premier restaurant bars. "This was when I arrived at the big time. We had people like David Beckham, George Clooney and Madonna eating there."
But just as business seemed to be going from strength to strength, White and Fuller fell out over how to position the booming business. They ended up selling their three restaurants for £7.5m in 2000. However, since then Fuller, now 49, has reinvested in a string of food-focused hotels and exclusive nightclubs.
His chain of boutique hotels, Sanctum, which he runs with Iron Maiden manager Andy Taylor, has been particularly successful, and he has also expanded his network of Geales restaurants. Last year his businesses generated sales of over £10m. Still a rocker at heart, he has just set up a new record label, Twilight Zone Records.
