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 is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (imaging and sensing), ...

with responsibility for launching products such as the

Walkman is a brand of Personal stereo, portable audio players manufactured by Sony since 1979. It was originally introduced as a portable Compact Cassette, cassette player and later expanded to include a range of portable audio products. Since 2011, ...

and

Compact Disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

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

HMV HMV is an international music and entertainment retailer, founded in 1921. The brand is owned by Hilco Capital and operated by Sunrise Records, except in Japan, where it is owned and operated by Lawson. The inaugural shop was opened on Lo ...

, 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 chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

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 (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguo ...

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 Tottenh ...

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 ) 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'' ( and ). The ...

, 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 The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

initiative.

References

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