In for a Pound: My Journey from a Market Stall to Three Hundred High Street Stores by Chris Edwards

by Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards has gone from running a stall on Wakefield market to masterminding a single price shopping chain with more than 300 stores across the United Kingdom. The remarkable retail rise to fame of his Poundworld business was fascinatingly featured in 2015’s highly-rated BBC1 series, Pound Shop Wars - and while Chris opened up about his astonishing success story to the cameras, it was his eighty-eight-year-old mum Alice who truly became a cult figure.‘I’ve always been driven by the fear of ending up skint!’ says Chris, who admits he once risked losing not only his own home, but also the houses of both his brother and business partner Laurie and of his own mum and dad on a single risky deal.Now, his frank and inspiring autobiography reveals the rise and rise of the businessman from hard-working one-man band with just a single van to high street tycoon with a fleet of huge lorries and more than 6,000 employees. And somehow along the way the sixty-five-year old Yorkshireman also built a thriving nightclub business with no fewer than nine venues.In 2015, Chris sold 75 per cent of Poundworld to American venture capitalists TPG for ?150million, but he is still in control and determined to drive Poundworld to new heights. This is the truly inspiring story of one man’s rise to the very top.

Hardcover

About the author

Chris made his advertising debut in 1993 as a copywriter at Arnold Worldwide, a high profile ad agency in Boston. There he used what he learned working in advertising along with his ever-present sense of humor to rebrand himself and orchestrate what was quite possibly the most widely accepted and embraced gender transition of its kind–at a time when the word “transgender” didn’t exist.

He eventually became more known for his creative talent than his transition. He was the first to use YouTube content in a TV spot with two guys rapping about McNuggets and is responsible for the earworm, Gimme back that Filet-O-Fish, gimme that fiiiiish. He was also part of the creative team on Truth, which was recently ranked one of the Top 15 Ad Campaigns of the 21st Century.

After building an award-winning career spanning nearly twenty years, Chris left his Arnold post as EVP, Group Creative Director to write his memoir, BALLS. Since then he’s become a sought-after speaker, inspiring audiences with his courageous story and compelling message that we actually have the power to control how others define us.