Touker Suleyman is a British-Turkish entrepreneur and fashion investor. He made his first appearance on BBC 2 business show Dragons’ Den in 2015 and has since been a panelist on the show. Touker Suleyman’s business interests are in retail and fashion.
Touker Suleyman’s net worth is about €150 million. As an entrepreneur and reality TV personality, his incomes are from his businesses and appearances on TV shows, mostly from Dragons’ Den.
Not every day, one sees a rich entrepreneur grace TV screen as a reality show. Touker Suleyman gives credit to his father being the inspiration behind his plunge into business. This article will provide you with a breakdown of Touker Suleyman’s net worth, age, house, wife, and involvement in Dragons’ Den.
Early Life
Touker Suleyman was born on 4 August 1953 in Famagusta, Cyprus. His family moved to England from Northern Cyprus in 1959 and settled in Bermondsey, South London. He attended Peckham Manor secondary school as his family started a restaurant business. He suffered a severe hand infection, which nearly led to the amputation of his left hand, and he lost a year of school because of that. Suleyman confessed to being a loner while in school but was a handwriting fellow, which formed part of his success story.
On leaving school, Suleyman worked for a chartered accountancy firm as an articled clerk in Southampton Row. He did account for small clients like dentists and small businesses earning €5 a week. By 1976, Suleyman established a clothing firm supplying women’s wear to high street brands. After he gave some Crimplene garments to his grandmother, whose friends got interested and demanded he supplied them the clothes, he was inspired into the business. His grandmother helped him sell those clothes for about a year. Subsequently, he partnered with a manufacturing factory briefly before founding Kingsland Models, which supplied clothing to Dorothy Perkins, Top Shop, and others.
In his early 20s, Suleyman invested in Mellins, a clothing line, taking up about a 29.9% stake of the company. He was advised to buy a stake in retailer Bamber Stores with the assumption of Bambers Stores having €500 million in assets. On hiring accountants to audit Bambers Stores, they (Coopers & Lybrand) discovered that Bambers Stores figures were doctored and were €25 million deep in deficit. Suleyman resigned, and the company’s shares were suspended. In order to save Mellins, he sold his house to repay the money he owed the bank.
Becoming an entrepreneur
In the mid-1980s, Suleyman bought a small cash-and-carry business, a clothing manufacturer supplying UK retail stores. He named the company Low Profile Group which has factories in Turkey, Bulgaria, and Georgia. Having had an impressive retail and manufacturing background in 2001, Suleyman and his brother went fully into the fashion business. With the business growth, Suleyman’s Low Profile Group came to the rescue of Hawes & Curtis in 2004. He bought the company for €1 and turned its €500,000 debt into €30 million by 2014. In the words of Suleyman, “The best deal I’ve ever done in my life is Hawes & Curtis when I bought it for a pound, but I hope that’s not my last deal.”
He still maintains his position as the chairman of Hawes & Curtis. Hawes & Curtis went international by 2013 under the leadership of Suleyman. It has spread to over 30 UK branches and a location in Germany. A partnership deal with Korath Holding saw Hawes & Curtis establish about 26 stores across the Middle East, opening mainly in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and so on. Hawes & Curtis has expressed their openness for business in other Eastern countries like Indonesia. The company started with shirts and is now into jackets, knitwear, and suits.
Success with Hawes & Curtis encouraged him to go for another rescue mission. The second time was another retailer in Women’s fashion wear. The acquisition of the fashion brand Ghost saved over a hundred job roles across the company. Suleyman acquired the company an Icelandic investment fund KCAJ. He re-launched Ghost in 2012, and it has gone on to be one of the leading brands in the UK for women’s fashion wear.
Other investments and Dragons’ Den
Since 2015, Suleyman became a ‘Dragon’ and has appeared on the BBC 2 business TV programme Dragons’ Den to date. Of the two investors chosen for the thirteenth series, he is the only one still left alongside Peter Jones, who has been on the programme from its onset and remains the richest ‘Dragon.’
Suleyman has other side investments aside from retail fashion wear brand. He has invested in other areas like:
- Docks Rio – a casual boat shoe brand.
- Intelligent Futures – an online advertising start-up
- Personify XP – an AI personalization
- Tru–Tension – an innovative motorcycle and cycling brand
His recent investments are:
- Huxley & Cox – a manufacturing firm dealing with luxury handbags.
- Bikesoup – an online start-up that allows independent bicycle retailers and consumers to advertise their wares on their websites. The company charges subscribers a minimum of €75 monthly. Antony Auty founded Bikesoup in 2010, and Suleyman invested about €100,000 in Bikesoup.
Touker Suleyman: wife and house
The British-Turkish entrepreneur always flaunts the pictures of his two beautiful daughters, Tashia (22) and Taya (19), but nothing is known about his two daughters’ wife and mother. Touker Suleyman brought his first property in 1978 in Highgate but sold it to settle his debt from investing in Bambers Stores.
He currently lives in a beautiful seven-bedroom home in Kensington, London. In 2013, David Beckham and his family rented Suleyman’s €20 million pad in South London, described as a ‘James Bond’ style house. He is a lovely father who spends his time with his daughters, and he gives to charity as well. He is a part of the Prince’s Trust, Retail Trust, and WellChild.
Touker Suleyman net worth
Touker Suleyman’s net worth is €150 million. As an entrepreneur and reality TV personality, his incomes are from his businesses and appearances on TV shows, mostly from Dragons’ Den. Touker Suleyman currently holds 27 leadership appointments at 27 active companies.
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