Trouble in Never-Never Land

When Entrepreneur John Bloom, then only 30, offered 500,000 shares of his Rolls Razor Ltd. on the London Exchange two years ago, investors grabbed them at $3.50 a share. On Bloom's rising reputation and Rolls's rising washing-machine sales, the hot stock doubled. In recent weeks, however, London's City has buzzed about troubles at Rolls, and the price of the company's stock has fluttered wildly. Last week, just two years and 51 days after John Bloom's stock was listed, it fell with a mighty crash. Nine minutes before the exchange closed, Rolls announced its voluntary liquidation, thus bringing down the cornerstone of Bloom's $70 million empire. In one of the City's most furious trading sessions, Rolls skidded from $1.18 to 15-c- a share.

Blonde & Boat. Raised in London's squalid East End, John Bloom quit school at 16, stumbled from one get-rich scheme to another. In 1958 he finally hit the right chord: he splurged $1,187 on an ad in the tabloid Daily Mirror (circ. 5,000,000) offering home washing-machine demonstrations. The ad drew 7,000 replies from prospering Britons--and Bloom soon had a firm set up to sell them. His unorthodox selling and barebone prices quickly cornered 10% of the washer market. Bloom then bought out lifeless Rolls, an old razor maker, to use as his corporate vehicle, expanded into dishwashers, refrigerators, trading stamps, rental TV, and even cheap holiday tours for Britons on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast.

Within four years after he began, Bloom was a millionaire. He knew how to live like one too. He married a dazzling blonde secretary, got himself a black Rolls and her a white Mercedes, took a Park Lane apartment and a Riviera villa, and bought a gleaming, $1,000,000, 376-ton yacht named Ariane. Bloom cultivated a goatee to hide his youth, spent half an hour daily with his hairdresser. Through it all, he flamboyantly plugged himself as a friend of the housewife, pal of the working man, scourge of the City and enemy of the Establishment.

"Maybe When I'm 40." In the end Bloom outsmarted himself. His success drew other hopefuls into a crowded market and aroused older appliance makers to cut costs and retail prices. Bloom proved as poor at finance as he was spectacular at promotion. Receipts from Rolls's "never-never"--as Britons call installment plans--were passed on to Merchant Sir Isaac Wolfson, who had bankrolled Bloom with a $28 million loan. Spotting trouble, Sir Isaac withdrew his support and sped the downfall.

Bloom's end came not long after he had been touted for knighthood, an honor that he modestly allowed he wanted "not at the moment, but I might when I'm 40." He may have to forget that now--but even after Rolls's debacle, he is surely at no loss for money. "I should not like to be poor again," he said recently, "and I have taken all the precautions to see that I shan't be." As he cruised in his yacht on the sunny Black Sea off Bulgaria last week while pandemonium hit the London Exchange, John Bloom must have reflected on the wisdom of those precautions.

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