Sean FarringtonBusiness presenter
AOJohn Roberts doesn’t mince his words.
The so-called kitchen king started AO selling discounted fridges and washing machines after a £1 bet with a friend that he couldn’t pull it off.
Some 25 years later, he’s won his bet and then some.
He is now at the helm of a £564m UK empire selling a host of big and small household appliances from TVs, laptops and phones, to fridge freezers, washing machines, kettles and toasters.
He is a British success story. As founder and chief executive, Roberts has built the firm – formerly known as Appliances Online – up from scratch to an employer of some 3,000 people in the UK.
The firm has overcome a post-Covid pandemic slump in trade and problems with international expansion to recently launch its first share buyback and raise its profit outlook for the full year.
The bumper financial figures fly in the face of grumblings over the current economic backdrop, tough business environment, and household cutbacks on the types of big, one-off purchases Roberts’ firm sells.
He bounds into the studio for our Big Boss Interview, a new business podcast from the BBC, with the energy of someone looking forward to a first pint on a Friday night, and the variety of conversation topics that might come with it.
Yet for a man who appears to be on top of the world, he’s surprisingly angry, in particular about the increasing hurdles he perceives the government is putting in the way of firms like his.
Tax rises in the form of employer’s National Insurance and concerns over the impending Employment Rights Bill have made it harder, he argues, for businesses to take risks on staff and tougher to compete with Chinese rivals who don’t face the same obstacles.
“We can’t carry costs that some of our competitors are not carrying. It’s as simple as that,” Roberts says.
“To not accept that is fantasyland, and we’re a UK success story. As a business, we employ thousands of people, we do great service. We’re rooted in the UK, and we should be turbocharged by our UK government, not disadvantaged.”
Following last autumn’s Budget AO warned that it was facing an extra £8m a year in costs as a result of April’s rise in National Insurance and the minimum wage.
Such costs, Roberts warns, are putting “grit” into businesses like his.
“We should be talking about job creation, not enforcing things that make business leaders think twice about recruiting people and about giving somebody a chance,” he says.
“It will still put grit into our business and grit is cost, and that means that it’s harder to be competitive.”
Away from business taxes, rising individual taxation levels are an issue for Roberts, who says he knows of wealthy people leaving the UK.
“What I really object to is the narrative that you can just keep taxing wealthy people and wasting the money. We are driving incredible amounts of wealth out of this nation,” says Roberts, who takes home his £546,000 annual salary, but has donated all his AO share options and any earnings from other investments to charity for the past 11 years.
But his bigger concern is around prospects for young people. He says he won “the postcode lottery of birth” being born in the north west of England into a loving family and being sent to a good school.
Now, “it’s never been harder” for young people, he says, accusing the government of not prioritising young people because “these kids don’t vote”.
“Politicians live in a world of votes, they only care about the votes,” he argues. “You try to take a Murray mint off a pensioner – uproar. But we’ve closed thousands of youth clubs. It’s a national disaster.”
Young people from a low-income, disadvantaged background aren’t doomed to failure, he says, “but the hill to climb is so much harder”.
“I’ve been saying for years we’re teaching kids in school for all the jobs that won’t exist. We don’t invest in facilities and pathways as a nation for disadvantaged kids.”
BBC/AOBehind Roberts’ clear frustrations, however, is a sense of motivation and optimism for the future, despite his expectation that the country is heading towards an economic recession.
“I disagree that’s it not an environment to thrive in. The market is still huge, we are still a very prosperous nation and so in that is a tonne of opportunity.
“We have lived through a few recessions in the last 25 years. I see that as yet another opportunity.”
The Treasury said tax decisions made at last year’s Budget meant the government was able to “deliver on the priorities” including investing in the NHS, reducing waiting times, and boosting wages for millions of British workers.
“We are a pro-business government that has capped corporation tax at 25%, the lowest rate in the G7, we’re reforming business rates, have secured trade deals with the US, EU and India,” a statement added.
The BBC is speaking to the bosses of some of the UK’s biggest firms to find out the stories behind the people that lead them.
