Isn't Sir Terence Conran busy enough for one family? After all, he runs a 900- store empire on both sides of the Atlantic, selling furniture, housewares and clothes that bear his imprint. But no, other family members have got into the act. His son Sebastian, 31, runs an industrial-design firm, and has created products ranging from baby carriages to hangars. Another son, Jasper, 27, is one of Britain's hottest clothing designers, whose clients include Princess Diana and the Rolling Stones. Sir Terence's sister Priscilla oversees the development of new products for her brother and still finds time to create such things as her own line of pots and pans. Oh, and don't forget Shirley Conran, Sir Terence's former wife. She wrote the steamy best seller Lace and has finished Savages, an equally lubricious tale to be published in the U.S. in September.
As busy as his relatives are, Sir Terence, 55, is still the most industrious. No one has had a greater impact on modern British housewares and furniture than Conran, but he seems intent on conquering America as well. He runs 15 Conran's outlets in the eastern U.S. and plans to expand to the West Coast. He operates more than 200 Mothercare stores, selling maternity and infant clothing. His three decorating books, The House Book, The Kitchen Book and The Bed & Bath Book, have sold more than 250,000 copies in the U.S. Conran travels to America at least four times a year, conferring with advisers and checking up on his stores. Says he: "America is our biggest opportunity for the future."
Son of a resin importer, Conran displayed a passion for his craft at 14, when he excelled in metalwork and pottery at the exclusive Bryanston School, in Dorset. After studying textile design at London's Central School of Design, he free-lanced as a furniture maker before opening a home-furnishings store, called Habitat, in London in 1964. From its rows of white crockery to assemble-it-yourself pine beds and tables, Habitat offered products designed in the modernist tradition of the '30s, a kind of Bauhaus for our house: less is more, natural is better, simple is best.
Conran's taste proved so popular that by 1977 Habitat had grown into a chain of 32 stores in Britain, France and Belgium. That same year, a confident Conran opened his first shop in the U.S., but the British-made goods did not always fit the new market. The tumblers and wineglasses were too small, the beds needed to be enlarged, and customers thought the toast racks were letter holders. Conran eventually worked out the kinks, and his U.S. stores made $4 million in profits last year.
In 1981 Conran bought Mothercare, a group of some 400 stores worldwide. Priscilla and Sebastian shook the dowdiness out of the Mothercare line, emphasizing colorful clothes made of natural fibers. "We wanted to get rid of that cynical attitude among mass-market retailers who say, 'Oh, these people don't have any taste, why bother,' " explains Conran. "People can only buy what they're offered, so their taste is made by what they're offered."