Theo Paphitis: The Retailer Who Fixed Tired High Street Names
Theo Paphitis
Theo Paphitis was born on 24 September 1959 in Limassol, Cyprus, and moved to Britain as a child, leaving school at sixteen and starting work in the City rather than in a shop.
His name on the high street came through acquisitions rather than start ups: he bought the stationery chain Ryman in 1995, went on to take on the UK arm of the lingerie retailer La Senza, and later added the hardware chain Robert Dyas.
Ryman, La Senza and Boux Avenue
The pattern across his career is a rescue rather than a launch. Ryman was in trouble when he took it on, and turning it round is still the deal he is best known for.
In 2011 he launched Boux Avenue, a lingerie chain he built from scratch instead of buying, which gave him both sides of the retail experience: the turnaround and the cold start.
Eight series in the Den
Paphitis joined Dragons' Den for its second series in 2005 and stayed until 2012, one of the longest runs of the show's early era, sitting alongside Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden. The pitches from those series are indexed season by season on this site.
Away from the panel he was chairman of Millwall Football Club for several years from the late 1990s, and in 2010 he started Small Business Sunday, the weekly social media pitch that has put a long list of small firms in front of his audience.
Products Theo Paphitis backed in the Den
