Mind Over Matter.
Lara Morgan has established a family investment office with a global focus. She has a track record of delivering accelerated and exceptional growth. She is an inspirational leader with a legacy of building world-class teams and aligning organizations behind a clear strategy. Having started as a salesperson Lara continues to practice daily the art of selling and creating win-win customer partnerships. Relentlessly learning Lara has specific expertise in strategy, customer insight and brand development, multichannel and multisite management and organic or M&A/partnership driven expansion.
Her first business, Pacific Direct was founded in 1991 at the age of 23. Lara quickly grew Pacific Direct into a specialist global licensee and supplier of luxury high-end brands to five-star hotels. Lara sold this business for £20 million having acquired battles scars and experience spanning extremely large organizations to small start-ups. She has been involved in multiple disciplines, including complex logistics and supply chain, marketing and retail operations to commercial and private label development. She has also owned factories in Czech and China.
Lara’s investment strategy is pinned to improving life’s journey. She invests in brands with global potential. Most notable is Scentered.me a portable wellbeing and lifestyle therapy brand that restores lifestyle balance. Given the juggle of having her own family whilst building a company, Lara gained a passion for fragrance and the lifestyle benefits using natural aromatherapy products to survive demanding travel schedule. Post exit Lara has invested in the best experts to blend Scentered, utilizing therapeutic grade essential oils. Scentered supports the vital importance of time for oneself. STOP INHALE RESET a mantra for mindfulness, meditation and any daily need to breathe well and deeply. 100% natural focused on portability and convenience all Lara’s interests build time effectiveness for individuals.
Other investments in Lara’s portfolio are: Dryrobe, the ultimate change robe, Gate8-luggage, lightweight time-saving functional and avoiding baggage check-in so also stress reducing. KitBrix a modular sports kit-bag solution to add training time. Company Shortcuts, Activbod and Global Amenities Direct are two other companies that Lara has built in line with her portfolio strategy.
On a personal level, Lara is a proud mother of three teenage girls and a committed volunteer and philanthropist. She is actively engaged with various global non-profits as a trustee/board member or advisor, It’s a penalty, Read International, Spark Inside and others Lara finds time to motivate and mentor. She speaks regularly at industry enterprise events. She has also appeared and commented on current affairs and business issues with Sky and BBC News and has also appeared on the popular BBC 2’s “The Apprentice: You’re Fired”.
She has been a finalist in Ernst and Young Entrepreneur 3 times and was a finalist in the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year Award. In 2009 Lara received the much coveted Cranfield University Entrepreneur Alumna Award. She is a published author of the Amazon best-selling business book “More Balls Than Most” and is a co-founder of StartUp Britain. Taking all this in her stride she also manages to train for charity bike rides and triathlon, coming 10th in the 2011 World Championships.
