YO! Company - YO! People

YO! Co is the wholly owned holding company of Simon Woodroffe that works with others to develop and seed finance YO! ideas and new YO! brands. YO! Co owns equity stakes and collects royalties from its endeavours.

"YO! was always destined to be a retail brand and just happened to be a sushi bar in its first manifestation." (Mark Norton, designer of the original YO! Logo)

The holy grail of retail today is to constantly and never endingly innovate in order to deliver high luxury without the high cost.

Click on the logos at the top of the page below to discover more about the various YO! Co. brands.

	Simon Woodroffe Simon was variously a bus conductor, roadie, stage designer, television executive and ski bum before spending two years creating YO! Sushi with his own limited funds. YO! Sushi opened 22 January 1997 and spawned the way for future YO! projects. For full information about Simon including public speaking and media requests, click here. .
	Robin Rowland After a chance meeting with Simon Woodroffe (Founder of YO! Sushi), Robin joined YO! Sushi as Operations Director in July 1999 and took over as CEO in September 2000. In 2003, he led a management buy-out backed by venture capitalist, Primary Capital. Over the next 5 years Robin and his team built the YO! Sushi into a strong, desirable and profitable brand and in 2008 Primary Capital sold YO! Sushi to Quilvest and YO! Sushi's management team. Today YO! Sushi has grown close to 50 restaurants worldwide, serving 3m+ customers a year and the Robin is keen to expand to 100 restaurants worldwide by 2012.
	Gerard Greene Gerard worked in, dreamed of and schemed hotels from the age of 13. He travelled the world consulting to others before writing to Simon in 2003 after reading publicity about Simon's plans for YOTEL. A year later he joined the company as Simon's partner in YOTEL. Gerard led the company from the conceptual stage, through feasibility and financing to opening and intends to make YOTEL a household name worldwide.
	Nick Tardent Nick came from a general management background first at retail giant HMV, then the Toni&Guy group. He started at YO! as Simon's Personal Assistant, eventually becoming his Business Manager. He now runs the day to day business of YO! Company as well as Simon's public speaking and media appearances.

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