Nick Candy

We’ve got a Rolls-Royce Phantom, a Mercedes SLR McLaren, a Cherokee Jeep, and … a Renault Clio! We’ve had Ferraris, Aston Martins, Porsches. We’ve probably got about 10 cars.

We started learning ourselves, understanding ourselves, reading, researching, going around the world and looking at what was defined as the very best.

Our aim is to compete with any luxury brand. Candy & Candy will be a luxury brand, recognised in Rodeo Drive, New York, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and London. Those are the major centres in the world. It will be synonymous with the design of homes, houses, flats, yachts, aircraft and retail.

Sometimes our idea of luxuries are our client’s ideas of necessities. You might think having a helicopter pad in the back garden, 20 housekeepers and two tennis coaches is over the top. But for them it’s like you buying a sandwich.

It’s true we’ve got some fantastic clients. We’re very fortunate to be connected with the movers and shakers of all the global cities of the world. You can usually tell when we’ve got a client in here because their bodyguards are all over the place: two outside the front door, two in the lobby, one in the lift…

We’ve created a recognisable brand that has the ability to be the Louis Vuitton of our era.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

As members of the Ford Motor organization we are engaged in the production of an article of use for the people of all countries. Our principle is to make our work as profitable for the buyer as for the seller.

I may be kindly, I am ordinarily gentle, but in my line of business I am obliged to will terribly what I will at all.

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.

I have no Napoleonic dream. I’m just hard working and pragmatic.

The Golden Rule finds no limit of application in business.

Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.

[on Steve jobs] Our relationship was based almost always on him calling up and asking, ‘Is this a good deal?’ I’m not in his business, and I wasn’t trying to be. I was just a guy who admired him a lot and was flattered he wanted my advice.

I have a theory that the best advertisements come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.

I always look at it that I work with my employees as opposed to them working for me.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

Success will always be measured by the extent to which we serve the buying public.

No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn’t actually fall down.

No matter what his position or experience in life, there is in everyone more latent than developed ability; far more unused than used power.

I did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.