The ‘£2 and a shed’ dream behind UK export giant

As rags-to-riches success stories go, Lord Ranger’s is hard to surpass. The youngest of eight children, he was born in a refugee camp in India, just weeks after his father was killed for opposing the partition. His family was so poor that they could not afford shoes, but his mother worked long hours as a teacher to ensure her children would at least be educated.

Lord Ranger was eventually able to attend the University of the Punjab, and moved to Britain in 1971. He has said he believed the streets would be paved with gold but was quickly disillusioned, and set to work earning money to earn his fare back home.

He started off by cleaning cars, then worked for a string of high street stores before setting up Sun Mark in 1987 – with “just £2 and a shed”. Today, it exports products ranging from deodorant to baked beans to

130 countries around the world, capitalising on an international appetite for British-sounding brands.

“I give them a beautiful name – Royalty, English Breeze, Golden Country, Pure Heaven,” he explained in 2016.

It has been a lucrative recipe. The firm clocked up £128 million in sales in 2019 – the last accounts available – and has garnered six Queen’s Awards for Enterprise.

“My story shows that one does not need a rich father, an elite education or the old school-boy network to help one in life. What one needs is self-respect, work ethics, commitment, vision and empathy for others,” he wrote in his autobiography From Nothing to Everything.

It is clear that public acknowledgements matter to him enormously.

The entrepreneur applied twice to become a “people’s peer”, under a system instituted by Tony Blair, and then in 2013 launched a legal bid to force the Lords appointments commission to reveal why both his applications had been rejected when, he claimed, he “more than” met the criteria.

He eventually got his wish in 2019 when he was included in former prime minister Theresa May’s resignation honours.