Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin

SINGO REVEALS HIS BIG REGRET

‘ONE OF US HAD TO GO’

- RYAN KEEN ryan.keen@news.com.au

LARRIKIN Australian businessma­n John Singleton is in his element.

At the Gold Coast’s Magic Millions yearling sale he once helped save from near oblivion with now outright owner Gerry Harvey, the Sydneyside­r is in jovial spirits.

Can we have a chat about his role in reviving it from a basket case in the mid-90s?

“Sure mate, I don’t give a f---k,” he grins. Before the interview starts, a wellwisher wanders up and asks how his new restaurant Saddles is going, to which Mr Singleton scoffs: “Bloody terrible — it’s totally packed all the time. I can never get a seat.”

He’s not sure if he will buy any yearlings — he says it depends how bored he gets and if he has “too many Fourex”.

He comes every year but now just as a buyer like everyone else, albeit an honoured guest of owners Gerry Harvey and wife Katie Page.

The colourful former adman known universall­y as “Singo’’ was one of the first people Mr Harvey called 20 years ago when the Magic Millions was struggling and he was looking to buy it.

Singleton admits he initially baulked at the idea, thinking it sounded too good to be true. “I said to Gerry ‘What’s the catch?’ and he said ‘There is no catch, it’s receivers, they have got no idea’,” he says.

The rest is history. The pair ended up taking it on — they kept the name and rustic auction shed complex retained today but now it is fully catered and airconditi­oned.

Mr Singleton said at the time you only bought “scraps” at the Magic Millions whereas the family-run Inglis sales were dominant.

But by boosting the Magic Millions race day, adding lead up races around the country and guaranteei­ng certain prices at the sale, they watched their market share soar, Mr Singleton says.

“It took about five years,” Singleton recalls. “We wanted to be number one. We took risks and we were agile. We would have a meeting Gerry and I, bang, done.”

They were a formidable team but an even more formidable partnershi­p would turn the yearling sale into the 12day headline grabbing festival it is now.

Enter Katie Page, considered the brains and driving force behind the Magic Millions’ ongoing success and growing mainstream appeal.

By the time 2011 rolled around Mr Harvey bought out his partners including Mr Singleton for a rumoured $50m.

As Mr Singleton describes it, it grew too big for the three of them to run successful­ly.

“It had to be one of us. I couldn’t afford to buy Gerry out. But he could afford to buy me out and not even notice — for him it was a round of drinks.

“It had to happen. I have regrets because I loved owning it, loved watching it grow, loved becoming dominant over Inglis — as much as I loved Inglis, I loved beating them.

“Gerry and I were a formidable team but I like to do things extravagan­tly, flamboyant­ly and think the profits will come.”

Mr Singleton says the Magic Millions nowadays — with its star-studded polo launch, swanky beachfront cocktail party and entertaini­ng barrier draw and beach race in Surfers Paradise — has evolved with “all those things I was unable to do with Gerry because he’s a pennypinch­ing bastard”.

Mr Singleton says Ms Page, the powerhouse CEO of Mr Harvey’s Harvey Norman retail giant, “has been able to persuade Gerry to do the things where I failed”.

“So she has an edge over me. I don’t know what it is, it’s a mystery to me. But she has been able to get Gerry to go to the next level with Magic Millions.”

When the Bulletin ran that by Ms Page, she said: “That’s pretty true. It was Singo and I who wanted to expand it from just the sale and race day. Singo and I knew it was this fantastic brand.

“We decided we would turn it into a boutique Melbourne Cup.

“But Gerry says no to everything and Singo accepts when Gerry says no.

“Gerry can say no to me as long as he likes but I’m still going to do it,” she says.

Ms Page points out she and Mr Harvey “work particular­ly well together. We know our strengths …”

“… and my weaknesses,” Mr Harvey interjects.

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 ?? Main picture: GLENN HAMPSON ?? Sydney entreprene­ur John “Singo’’ Singleton at the Magic Millions yearling sale he once co-owned; (inset) Gerry Harvey and Katie Page.
Main picture: GLENN HAMPSON Sydney entreprene­ur John “Singo’’ Singleton at the Magic Millions yearling sale he once co-owned; (inset) Gerry Harvey and Katie Page.

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