Lara Morgan

Lara founded her first business, Pacific Direct, in 1991 at the age of just 23. Having arrived in the UK from Hong Kong with little or no hotel experience, Lara quickly grew Pacific Direct into a specialist global supplier of luxury high-end brands for five-star hotels. Seventeen years later, she sold Pacific Direct for £20 million. At Pacific Direct she was involved in multiple disciplines from luxury brand licensing, marketing, retail operations to commercial and private label development. She has also managed and owned factories in Czech and China. Working with extremely large organisations as well as small start ups, she acquired valuable sector experience in speciality retail, brand merchandising, consumer health, education, well-being, travel, leisure and hospitality.

Lara invests in British brands including Scentered.me, the 100% natural, portable mood therapy brand; Dryrobe, the ultimate change robe; Gate8 lightweight time-saving functional business luggage; KitBrix, modular sports kit bags. ActiveBod and Global Amenities Direct are two other companies that Lara has built in line with her portfolio strategy.

Lara has been a finalist in Ernst Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award three times and a finalist in the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year Award. In 2009 Lara received the much coveted Cranfield University Entrepreneur Alumna Award. She is a published author of the Amazon best-selling business book “More Balls Than Most” and is a co-founder of StartUp Britain. Taking all of this in her stride, she also manages to train for charity bike rides and triathlon and came 10th in the 2011 World Triathlon Championships in Beijing.