Ian Duffell, is an English businessman with international experience in the entertainment and leisure industries. Initially, he worked in the UK as a Marketing Executive for

Sony Corporation , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

with responsibility for launching products such as the

Walkman Walkman, stylised as , is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for ...

and

Compact Disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...

. Moving into the music industry, Ian was appointed as Managing Director of

HMV Sunrise Records and Entertainment, trading as HMV (for His Master's Voice), is a British music and entertainment retailer, currently operating exclusively in the United Kingdom. The first HMV-branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company ...

, opening th
world's largest
music store in 1986. His international career began in 1987 as

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of Virgin Entertainment Group heading up the company's expansion into the Asia-Pacific region. In 1992 he relocated to the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

opening more than 20

Virgin Megastore Virgin Megastores is an international entertainment retailing chain, founded in early 1976 by Richard Branson as a record shop on London's Oxford Street. In 1979 the company opened their first Megastore at the end of Oxford Street and Tottenha ...

s in a six-year period, including the landmar
Times Square, New York store.
with combined annualised revenue exceeding $200 million. In 2001 he relocated back to Australia and joined ASX-listed Brazin Ltd as Managing Director, with a mandate to restructure the retail portfolio and internationally expand

Sanity Sanity (from la, sāntā) refers to the soundness, rationality, and health of the human mind, as opposed to insanity. A person is sane if they are rational. In modern society, the term has become exclusively synonymous with ''compos mentis'' ( ...

, the music retail business. Following this success, he was a partner in the development of a large five star beachfront resort in Canggu, Bal

until its sale in 2014. Since then, he has been involved with various technology ventures and is currently developing an asset-backed

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

initiative.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Duffell, Ian Australian businesspeople English businesspeople Year of birth missing (living people) Living people