EVERY three or four weeks William Hindmarch makes a call to tell someone that he or she has won a Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale, a Lamborghini Gallardo or maybe a Bond-style Bladerunner boat.
The response is always the same. Nobody believes him. “They think it’s a wind-up. Almost everyone puts the phone down on me. Then they call back on the company phone number to make sure it’s for real.
“That’s when they get really excited,” said Hindmarch. “Just listen to the calls — they are on the website.”
He’s right. Disbelief flips to pure joy when the winner finally accepts that the £60 ticket hurriedly bought at the airport wasn’t a con after all.
The 32-year-old has been phoning winners for the six years since he set up the Best of the Best car competition in airport departure lounges. Travellers are invited to play a Spot the Ball game, with the winner taking the keys to a top-of-the-range car, motorbike or speedboat.
Surprising the winners is still the best bit of Hindmarch’s job. “The next best is seeing their faces when I deliver the car.”
So far Hindmarch has handed over £7m of cars to 140 winners. A student who won a BMW still texts Hindmarch every month to thank him. A Merrill Lynch trader resigned the day after she won her Ferrari 360 and hasn’t been seen since.
Hindmarch has just taken a gamble himself by slashing the £60 ticket to £20 for the top supercar. But sales are soaring, particularly online. So he is looking at a new £5 contest to win watches and diamonds. And why not handbags? The Hindmarch name is better known for the handbags that William’s elder sister Anya designs for celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and Madonna, who are willing to pay up to £7,000 for one of her bags.
She has just sold a stake in her company to Kelso Place Asset Management, a private-equity firm funded by Goldman Sachs bankers, including Michael Sherwood, co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs International.
Kelso’s co-founder John Drinkwater, a former Goldman executive, has joined Anya’s board, as has Sian Westerman, Rothschild managing director and wife of Matthew Westerman, another Goldman director.
The deal, for a minority stake, values Anya’s handbags company at £20m — not bad for a business she started 12 years ago with a small loan from her father.
Risking money — and making it — runs in the family. Their father, Michael, trained as a plastics technologist and claims to be Britain’s first maker of plastic flowerpots. He founded Plantpak and then reversed it into Falcon Industries in the 1980s.
Having lent his children the money to start, he now sits on both their boards. “He’s our fiercest critic and best supporter. But we’ve given him a few grey hairs,” said William.
