1 - 17 of 17 results Brand - A to Z Brand - Z to A Price – low to high Price – high to low Discount % (Highest to Lowest) Keep cool with a fan from Currys. There’s nothing worse than an oppressively hot room. Overheating can be both physically uncomfortable and mentally distracting – so, whether you’re trying to keep comfortable and productive in the office or create a pleasant, liveable atmosphere in your home, it’s important to have an effective means of controlling the temperature. Our extensive selection of fans covers all your cooling needs and even includes duel purpose fans that offer powerful room heating in the winter as well as a pleasant flow of cool air in the summer. Top of the range Dyson fans like the bladeless Dyson Hot + Cool AM09 Fan Heater deliver precise, room-filling air temperature, powered by intelligent Air Multiplier technology allowing you to precisely regulate room temperature and create the perfect atmosphere.
We’ve also got a variety of options if you’re on the lookout for a simple, affordable desk fan that will take the heat out of a hot, sweaty day in the office. And if you don’t want to compromise on quality and control advanced desk fans from Dyson offer an array of innovative features including a multitude of speed settings, a remote control, precision tilting and whisper quiet performance that ensures distraction free air-cooling. Please complete your details. We'll only use these to contact you about this item. * We'll need this to email youThe rows of glasses glint on impeccably laid tables, inviting guests to pair wines with chocolate or Turkish delight beneath the cloud-capped Hottentots Holland mountains. Established by the governor of the Cape in the 18th century, the sumptuous Lourensford Wine Estate spans 4,000 hectares and contains vineyards, apple, plum and pear trees and beehives, as well as an art gallery, coffee roastery and landscaped garden. That the farm in South Africa’s celebrated wine country is owned by Christo Wiese, said to be the country’s fourth-richest man, will come as little surprise to those who have felt his spending power of late.
The 73-year-old Afrikaner is moving into Britain in a big way. He has just snapped up two household names in short order: Sir Richard Branson’s gym chain Virgin Active for £682m and high-street fashion retailer New Look for £780m. He is also backing a new UK fashion chain, Pep & Co, specialising in discount fashion and childrenswear for young mums. The first shop is due to open next month, in Kettering, Northants, and there should be 50 outlets open for business by the end of August. It is a bold plan in a tough market, going up against rivals such as Primark, Matalan and the supermarket fashion labels, and Wiese has hired former Asda boss Andy Bond – who previously ran the grocer’s George clothing label – to mastermind the plan. The idea is to cash in on the booming demand for discount stores and provide a fashion shop for those who are regular customers at chains such Wilko, Poundland, Aldi and Iceland. The chain will focus on high-street outlets in smaller towns.
“What the discounters have done in food, I hope we can do in fashion,” explains Bond. Wiese certainly has the experience. His Pepkor group owns 3,700 clothes stores worldwide, including nearly 3,000 in southern Africa, a 500-store chain in Poland called Pepco, and growing businesses in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Australia and New Zealand. Like many of the most successful retail entrepreneurs, Wiese also has deep pockets: Forbes puts his fortune at $6.5bn (£4.2bn). But this billionaire is not one for ostentatious displays of wealth: he still drives his own car and works from a third-floor office that has none of the glamour of the Lourensford Estate, or the stupendous ocean views enjoyed by many of Cape Town’s crème de la crème. Instead he remains where it all began, on an industrial estate where his parents founded the clothing chain Pep Stores, among carwashes and tuck shops in Parow East. “It’s the most unfashionable suburb you can imagine,” says Marc Hasenfuss, editor-at-large of South Africa’s Financial Mail.
“He certainly hasn’t got a view of the sea or the mountain. It’s drab and there are certainly no trappings of grandeur there, that’s for sure. He says this is where his constituency is: the people who are shopping at his stores.” Wiese grew up in Upington in Northern Cape, the biggest but least populated province in the country, and his father was a smalltown businessman and farmer. “My dad drove a nice car, we had a nice home, we went on nice holidays,” he told South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper in 2011. He trained and worked as a lawyer, but in the 1960s joined the family business as an executive director at Pep Stores, which would grow to become Pepkor. He had brief forays into the diamond mining industry and politics, standing as a candidate for the Progressive Federal party – a forerunner of today’s opposition Democratic Alliance – in Simon’s Town in 1977. He returned to Pepkor as chairman in 1980 and took the company public six years later.
By then it had bought grocer Shoprite Holdings, which was later spun off and is now Africa’s biggest food retailer. Wiese had equity in both companies and now owns immensely lucrative stakes in Shoprite and Steinhoff, the South African firm that is the second biggest furniture seller in Europe with brands including Harveys, Bensons for Beds and Cargo. He also owns a stake in Iceland. But his first attempt to crack Britain – with Poundstretcher and Your More Store – was not a roaring success. Hasenfuss says: “He’s certainly not dull. Even when he cocks it up, he’s interesting. He’s a hell of a brave investor.” The recent audacious acquisitions of Virgin Active and New Look suggest that Wiese has lost none of his appetite. Hasenfuss adds: “I believe the guy’s addicted to it. He loves the risk. His eyes light up. Like other people with golf or surfing or whatever, he loves being in the game.” Yet he appears to have made surprisingly few enemies. “When I did a cover story on him I was looking for that quote, ‘Christo’s a bastard’, and really struggled to find anyone to say a bad word about him.
He’s an incredibly polite, decent person. He doesn’t hold grudges. I’ve been around for a long time and I’ve never heard, ‘Jeez, Christo screwed me’. I suppose he’s rich enough that he doesn’t need to.” Wiese bought the Lourensford Wine Estate in 1998, vowing to preserve and protect its heritage, and attends financial meetings there monthly. In 2006 he hired Koos Jordaan to run the wine division. Wiese is not a wine aficionado but is partial to the estate’s chardonnay and Méthode Cap Classique, according to Jordaan. Sometimes he also come to the property to enjoy clay pigeon shooting. “Christo is very charismatic and easygoing,” Jordaan says. “Always a smile, always a joke. He’s the kind of guy who would walk in here and say to the staff, how are you doing? He’s down-to-earth, not on a pedestal. He doesn’t have a chauffeur, even though he could afford 10. He’ll always tell stories about the olden times – in every meeting there’s always a lesson.”
Jordaan adds: “What I’ve learned from Christo is that once he’s made a move, he’s like a very good chess player: there are a few steps after that and a very long-term goal. That’s why he’s been successful. He’s been able to identify these opportunities and make the right moves.” South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world, polarised between a super-rich, still largely white, elite that includes Wiese, and a black majority plagued by rampant unemployment. “Christo feels business in South Africa has a common responsibility of really uplifting South Africa and Africa, either by offering job opportunities or in other ways,” Jordaan says. “He’s still very optimistic about the future of South Africa and Africa. He says the resources still need to be developed. That’s why he’s still here.” He is married to Caro, the daughter of the late Japie Basson, the leading politician dubbed a chameleon because of his habit of changing parties, and has three children, all in their 30s.
Wiese himself keeps a low political profile. He watches rugby and cricket and spends time helping conservation efforts on his game farm in the Kalahari desert. “I still enjoy what I’m doing, which is building businesses,” he said recently. “I don’t play golf. I don’t have any particular passion apart from my business and my family, and that gives me all the pleasure that I want.” Retirement, evidently, is unthinkable. Syd Vianello, a retail analyst, says: “In his world it’s about achieving the next business deal and that’s what gives him a kick. It’s a bit strange to go into the UK at this time of life, but it’s in his DNA.” Britain has not always been a happy hunting ground for Wiese. In a strange incident in 2009, he was stopped with almost £700,000 in cash in a suitcase while boarding a plane at London City airport. But he has since had the money returned to him in full after his lawyers were able to demonstrate that the sum was a drop in the ocean of his personal fortune.