It may be typical to many entrepreneurs I have come across to always be up for another or bigger challenge. As one of South Africa's most successfully entrepreneurs turns 40, Andrew Rolfe is only now getting into his stride:


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Business Day (Johannesburg)

July 19, 2006
Posted to the web July 19, 2006

ANDREW Rolfe turns 40 today, an age most people in their 30s dread. But Rolfe is flying high. With a string of business achievements behind him, a wife and family and more time for himself, he has achieved more than many in his generation. But he still hasn't found what he's looking for. Rolfe is notable for his successes with companies such as iconic UK sandwich-maker Prêt A Manger and US clothing company Gap.

He grew up in Johannesburg and went to boarding school at St Andrews in Grahamstown.

But Rolfe is not just a city boy -- his family has a farm near Bethlehem in Free State. It was on the farm that he learnt to hunt and it probably helped toughen him up for his two years of national service. When it is pointed out that Bethlehem is just about the coldest place in SA, Rolfe laughs and tells a joke about why Jesus could not be born in Bethlehem, SA -- no-one could find three wise men or a virgin.

Rolfe also admits to enjoying hunting. He goes on trips in southern Africa to hunt animals such as Cape buffalo, kudu and eland.

Today he will be celebrating his birthday on his "finca", a farm in the northern part of Majorca, with his wife and two children. He says this part of Spain is similar to Franschhoek, but without the houses.

Rolfe's wife, Fabiola Arredondo, is better known in business than he is -- she was responsible for the launch of Yahoo! in Europe. Rolfe met her when they were studying for an MBA at Harvard Business School. She helped him when he realised he was seriously unprepared for the course, as he had not yet used a computer when he arrived in Boston in 1992.

Rolfe is proof that going to a good school results in making contacts. Not only did he meet Arredondo at the business school, but also his present business colleagues, Ramez Sousou and Patrick Smulders.

Although he will be in Spain tonight, he will be having huge birthday celebrations on the Zimbabwean side of the Zambezi Valley in September.

Many people these days choose to stay on the Zambian side, but Rolfe is not afraid of the problems of SA's northerly neighbour. "I love the country and I have many friends there," he says.

But Rolfe did not spend much of his young adulthood in Africa. While studying at the University of Cape Town, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, which sent him to study and play rugby at Oxford (he got his Oxford blues).

During his holidays he would return to SA and work for Anton Rupert's Small Business Development Corporation, which sent him out to the townships in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This was a time when most white South Africans kept clear of the townships, but Rolfe says he went into townships around Gauteng every day and never felt uncomfortable. He organised a party for family and friends with his cousin, Gareth Penny (now MD of De Beers Group), at Godfrey Moloi's Blue Fountain Jazz Club in Soweto one night, and the two guys transported busloads of people out to the club.

Rolfe's CV does not attest to his willingness to find important projects in southern Africa, but he was one of the driving forces behind Gap's involvement in the project known as (RED).

(RED) was created by U2 lead singer Bono and Bobby Shriver (Arnold Schwarzenegger's brother-in-law and part of the Kennedy clan) to raise awareness and money for The Global Fund, the charity set up by world leaders and the United Nations to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

(RED) does this by teaming up with the some of the world's big brands, including Motorola cellphones, Converse sneakers, Emporio Armani sunglasses, and Gap T-shirts, which are manufactured in Lesotho.

A percentage of each item sold is donated to The Global Fund. The money particularly assists women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa.

(RED) was launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year.

Rolfe says Bono is an "amazing guy" and recalls how at dinner the night before the launch, people were making toasts, and standing up and introducing themselves. Apparently, the crowd fell apart when the musician stood up and said, "Hi, I'm Bono and I'm a rock star."

Bono had been asked how he could work with brands such as Nike and Gap, which have been accused of exploiting workers in the past.

In response, Bono said that if he could help to make sure fewer people died in Africa by being a little exploited himself, he could cope with it. He was not, after all, he said, a cheap date.

Rolfe -- listed by his college at Oxford, St Edmund, as a "famous graduate" on its website -- had his first big business break as chairman and CE of the fast- food take away sensation, Prêt A Manger (French for "ready to eat").

Any South African who has spent time in the UK (or New York, Tokyo or Hong Kong) will probably know -- and have been sustained by -- Prêt sandwiches.

The company promises to provide preservative-free, healthy food, and Rolfe trudged the length and breadth of farmlands searching for milk from cows that had been naturally reared, pigs that had been brought up on only the finest swill, and lettuces grown only in the purest manure.

The chain's success has been legendary, but when Prêt A Manger sold a 33% stake to McDonald's, often the target of healthy-food campaigners and activists, the company was on the receiving end of bad press.

After taking the business into the US and Asia, Rolfe left Prêt in 2003. He had been keen to expand it further and make it his life, but partners Julian Metcalfe and Sinclair Beecham wanted to get their cash out.

Although Rolfe tried to buy out Metcalfe and Beecham, the partners could not agree on a price and, with relations becoming increasingly strained, Rolfe sold his stake.

Rolfe was never able to bring the walking person's lunch shop to SA -- no South African city had the dedicated foot traffic that the quickie lunch stop would have required to turn a profit.

However, the now-bustling Johannesburg central business district may be a possibility for Prêt A Manger. Rolfe would not be the person to bring Prêt to SA, but he does want to see what has been happening, and will be in Johannesburg in August to head downtown to check it out.

After Prêt, Rolfe was keen to take a break and find another business he could place some of his capital into and build it up. Then the head of Gap, Paul Pressler, was introduced to Rolfe through a head-hunter friend.

"Paul was very impressive and convinced me to join him. I was a little seduced by the challenge, the resources and size of the brand."

So it was back to the US for Rolfe and his family. After starting out in San Francisco with Gap, Rolfe soon moved to New York and was overseeing Gap's international expansion and its new franchising model as the brand moved to many territories, including Japan.

When he was at Gap, Rolfe says he would constantly receive letters and requests to bring the store to SA.

"The biggest barrier is that you build fashions for the northern seasons, so SA would have needed a whole new line. That's a lot of work for not much return."

Rolfe clocked up more than 1-million air miles in his couple of years with Gap. This left him tired and still not completely satisfied. He wanted to find that business to build up and lead.

Rolfe is now with a large US and European private equity firm, Towerbrook Capital Partners, which was George Soros's company, Soros Private Equity, until it was hived off to Sousou and Smulders.

Rolfe's job is to hunt for buy-out opportunities in the retail and food service sectors -- industries he knows well -- that the firm can invest in, build up and then sell. Private equity work, which is about spotting deals rather than spending long hours on the treadmill, is giving Rolfe the opportunity he craved to spend more time with his family.

Private equity and hedge funds are the "sexy" businesses of the financial world. When they perform well, the upside can be enormous.

The top hedge fund manager last year was paid $1,5 bn, according to the Financial Times. But Rolfe says nobody gets paid this in the private equity industry and that basic salaries are not that high.

"The big payout comes when a business is sold and the partners get a share in the profits.

"But if the business doesn't grow, there is no big sale and no payout."

Rolfe says he is not entirely in the industry for the money, but he is not aiming to retire soon.

Finding something to put his heart and soul into is still on the cards.

"I really enjoy what I do," he says. "In the future I would want to spend less time on commercial ventures and more time on things such as developmental work in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Right now it's about 80-20 in favour of commercial, but in time I'd like to reverse that."

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