Perhaps its best if Wiggins starts at the beginning. Even though its six years since he first met Bennett, he still remembers it clearly. I was working part-time in a chip shop, he recalls, and Steve came in one Friday night and said, Can I have a doner kebab? I replied, You can but I think youd prefer a chicken kebab its more enjoyable, its got more meat.
He bought one, walked out of the shop and then he reckons he stopped to think for a minute. Hang about, he thought, Ive just bought a chicken kebab. Ive never tried one before, I dont know if Im going to like it and it cost more than the thing I actually wanted. So he came straight back in and asked me if Id ever worked in sales. I said no but he gave me his card and told me to give him a ring on Monday if I wanted a job.
If this wasnt unsual enough, Bennett has now put the man from the chip shop in charge of a company and not any old company.
Yes, hes given me a company to run, Wiggins confirms. Its basically Steves pension plan and it serves as his brothers and fathers too. Its made up of investments in three buildings, I have to do all the VAT and tax returns. So had Bennett uncovered a financial genius? Er no, replies Wiggins candidly, Ive never been any good at figures. Maths... oh, Im terrible at it. If I havent got a calculator, I cant even add two and two together.
It all seems a bit bizarre. Perhaps all the tensions of Bennetts life and career have upset the balance of his mind. At 35, Bennett is just embarking on his second marriage and is soon to have his third child. At school, he wanted to be a professional saxophonist, but suffered the disappointment of not quite making it though he did play on the remake of the single, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, released to promote Jungle.com.
He also aimed to get to the top in yachting, but had to be satisfied with a bronze medal at the World Championships. He set up a couple of magazines, a couple of mail-order companies (including a failed buy-a-garden-shed venture with Vaughan) and various other interests before Jungle.com, the software, games, DVD and video shopping site, took off.
And this is where the story gets particulary tasty. After all, he is the man who lost a potential personal fortune of 200 million last year when the value of Jungle.com plunged from over 700 million to just 37 million a crash that made the prize money at stake in Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? look like Blankety Blank. In the end, Bennett was presented with a cheque for a mere 6 million.
Yet Bennett is adamant he hasnt lost the plot. With the business thing, theres still a lot more that I want to achieve, but at least I can sit back and be happy with what Ive done. As for Barry, well hes fantastic. Hes not a secretary, but hes a real personal assistant he organises me, gets things done and gets me through to the people I want to speak to. Hes brilliant at it. Its amazing. Whenever I go to an appointment, they all go, Hows Barry?
Six years on, having moved from top salesman, to shop man-ager, to PA and pension fund manager, Wiggins has no doubts. The main reason we get on so well is that I dont treat him like a boss, I treat him like a brother. We just get on.
Wiggins is just a year older than Bennett and before they met had worked as a security guard at the NEC, a warehouseman and spent seven years as a long-distance lorry driver before working in the shop. It has been some transformation.
Bennett relates the rest of the story. Barry went into the sales team and found it really hard. I had the sales manager ringing me to say he wasnt cut out for it, but I just asked him to persevere. It worked. Eventually Barry became our top salesman, assistant manager in a shop, then manager of our flagship branch.
Unfortunately, this is where the wheels fell off. Everyones got their strengths and weaknesses, says Bennett, and he ended up out of his depth and getting fired. He was really upset, he came into my office and said, Ive worked for you for five years, dedicated myself to you... All that. I told him to go away on paid holiday for a month and come back and Id have something for him.
Wiggins was somewhat aggrieved to find when he returned at a busy time that he had slipped from his bosss mind.
Bennett was somewhat at a loss when Wiggins turned up expecting a job. However, since Bennetts secretary had just left, an opportunity presented itself. He said he didnt know anything about being a secretary, but I just asked him to help me out for a while.
Right on cue, Wiggins opens the door. Sorry, you cant stay in here, the boardrooms booked now. Who wants it? asks Bennett. Wiggins looks a little sheepish, Erm, its a disciplinary, he replies. Well, thats just great, innit? says Bennett with a chuckle. Weve got Human Resources magazine here and weve got a disciplinary.
Disciplinaries, it seems, are quite rare, although Jungle.com has a very young workforce, with many in their first job. Bennett is not too far removed from them, either physically or mentally. He is 35 and for the first time for years is working for someone else. Nor is he finding it all that easy. He reveals that he works a 60-hour week. But how much of that is for Jungle? He laughs again. Id better be careful what I say, he says, eyeing the tape recorder suspiciously. Uhm, I work a 37-hour week for Jungle, but it never feels like work when you run the company.
Actually, he then confesses, it probably sounds pathetic at the age of 35, but Im really quite tired now. Its not a surprise. His one holiday in the past few years has been his honeymoon in September last year. The deal that sold Jungle.com to GUS went through at 5am on a Thursday, he took the following Friday afternoon off to set up a marquee at his house, was married on the Saturday, and I just zonked for two whole weeks, says Bennett, The wife wasnt very pleased, I can tell you.
He does however, seem to have made amends, although the birth of a child this summer is bound to affect his working hours adversely, I have taken a conscious decision to slow down a bit over the next couple of years and have some proper holidays, he says.
One current and welcome constraint on his time at Jungle.com is its open-door policy, and about this he has no complaints. I used to work at ICL you wouldnt dream of walking in on the MD. Here, we use common sense. The door is shut during meetings but people just come back later or drop me an email.
His concern is that as the company grows, people could lose touch with how important their job is to the company. We go though all the matrices with sales staff, he says, repeating the mantra, It costs six times more to recruit a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. And to people working in the warehouse, Well explain the benefits of putting the packing tape on straight. We would say to them, How would you like it if this turned up at your house compared to this one?
He has clear views on how to succeed at e-tailing: If you can enhance the shopping experience and make it better on the web than on the high street, then eventually the web will win. Its all about adding value, giving more information on products than you could get in a shop, and knowing when you order something, it will arrive the next day, or the day after.
He is also well aware of how easy it is to fail on the web. I tried to buy some socks on the internet, he admits, five pairs actually but it took me something like 20 hours of chasing and messing around with credit cards to get it all sorted. Thats 100 a pair... If something like that happens, youre not going to try it again.
Another person who has seen Bennett operate over the past year is HR director Jo Sawbridge. She joined Jungle.com in May. When asked if being part of a larger organisation will suit her chief executive, she laughs, No comment, but adds, So long as hes given wings to fly, and not given the detail of implementation, the group will get the benefit out of him. She feels there has to be a network of directors in place to ensure that his 15 or 20 great ideas actually happen...
Sawbridge goes on to describe what Bennett wants from HR. The first is obvious: he expects a constant supply of good calibre people joining the organisation effective resourcing to meet the growth plans in the budget. The next is possibly more Bennett-specific, He very much flies by the seat of his pants, she says, he wants immediate responses and in lots of ways, you have to say yes, ok, we are going to try to get a quick solution, but we want the right solution. We wont drag our heels, but its a very limited market people with good e-tailing skills...
One thing is clear, working with Bennett is never dull. As Wiggins says, Ever since Steve asked me to become his assistant, its been an absolute buzz. I havent looked back. Theres something new every week and thats such a challenge. Hes been through such a lot over the past 12 months and when you work closely with him, you see hows he handling it and hes done so well. Hes always got a contingency plan. I was worried when he told me about Jungle.com, but Steves got the Midas touch. Whatever he touches seems to work.
