Another pounds 1m made, then back in time for school

Enterprise/ teenage tycoon

I MANAGED to reach Reuben Singh on his car phone. He had a double free period at school and was using this gap to dash into Manchester's city centre for a meeting with his company's lawyers. Reuben Singh is 18 and studying for his A-levels at William Hulme Grammar School, Manchester. He also runs his own business, Reuben Singh Holdings, which deals in fashion jewellery and accessories. He is worth something approaching pounds 10m.

The recipe for his success, he says, is simple: "Girls don't have the money to go out and buy new clothes every day. By using accessories they can change how their clothes look. It's also a business with a good turnover and a very high profit margin."

The million-pound deals have to be crammed in between essays on Shakespeare and the Labour movement in the 1930s, as the teenage tycoon hurtles from school to office and back, before he gets a late chit.

He rises, he tells me, at 5am; at 7am he is in the office. He works until 8.30am, then dashes to school for 8.45 in his brand-new Jaguar sports car. At 12.30pm, when his fellow pupils go off for a game of football, Reuben goes back to the office for another hour's work. After school finishes at 3.30pm, he goes back to the office again until 9pm. Then it is time for at least three hours of revision.

His first A-level, English, he says rather anxiously is looming ever closer. For a moment, he sounds like any other schoolboy in that revision lull before the exams. But it soon passes. He tells me that his school has predicted two grade As and a B. After A-levels he plans to go to the University of Manchester to do business studies. He admits it will be a little strange to learn the theory after having been involved in the practical side since he was 12.

Twelve? He started at that age in his parents' company, Sabco, which, he tells me proudly, supplies fashion jewellery and accessories to nearly 90 per cent of Britain's chain stores. He began by dealing with customers. Then he started to accompany his mother on buying trips to the Far East.

At 14 he made his first independent trip - accompanied, he points out, by 12 assistant buyers. The first deal he cut on his own involved nearly pounds 500,000. He was having to deal directly with the manufacturers and to negotiate with chain stores.

Four years later at 18, he says, he is almost a veteran businessman. He still deals directly with manufacturers. He makes nine or 10 trips a year to the Far East, and travels to Milan and Barcelona nearly every week.

His new project is a series of shops called Miss Attitude. He opened the first in Manchester just over a month ago, and now he has another in Manchester and a third in Oldham. "The plan is to have 20 shops up and running by Christmas. Miss Attitude will be in the high streets of all the major cities by this time next year. They will also be in Spain, Italy and France." He points out a unique feature of the enterprise - he is the only 18-year-old who has set up a company which targets his own age group.

"The brand name for Miss Attitude is '4U2NV'." He enunciates it slowly. "Do you get it?" he inquires almost hesitantly. "For you to envy. That's our patented brand name. I think that it is rather good."

He speaks quickly, with a great torrent of words and ideas tumbling out, but somehow manages to remain polite. I ask him what his schoolfriends think of him. "Basically, they have always thought that I was a little different. I used to attend political conferences in universities when I was 12, just because I was interested. My friends had their hobbies, football mainly, I had mine - business and politics. I wouldn't say that they were jealous of my success."

I ask him whether he has any long-term political ambitions. "Business is politics," he replies.

He may be a multi-millionaire, but he still lives with his parents, which is convenient because Sabco will be supplying all the goods for his shops. "I don't think that we'll have any trouble with our suppliers," he says.

A Chicago-based company, Balloon Trade Incorporated, offered him $2m (pounds 1.3m) for the Miss Attitude company when it was still at the conceptual stage.

"This figure rose sharply after the third shop opened, but I'm still not selling. I was just so pleased that the Americans were willing to recognise the conceptual planning of an 18-year-old."

Despite all his success, he is determined to start at university in the autumn. "Business can be here today and gone tomorrow. A degree is something that stays with you forever. My eventual goal is to get an MBA."

But does he have time for a social life? He laughs quietly. "When I do eventually go out, I am more interested in what people are wearing and what accessories they've got on, than enjoying myself. I never turn off."

And on that note, I let him get back to his lawyers. And his revision.