INTERNATIONAL. As first reported on our Moodie Live blogging service from Cannes, Flemingo International Director and Board Member Paul Topping was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement at the Frontier Awards last week.
Topping began his retail career selling mangoes outside his minister father’s Presbyterian church in Livingstone, Zambia at the age of five. Many years later he joined the retail chain British Home Stores in the UK, working in ten different locations in ten years with his responsibilities including managing stores, shop development and planning, catering and shop opening.
At the age of 28, he joined Horne Bros Menswear, a premium UK brand and played a key role in repositioning the company, expanding locations, implementing the new brand and launching ZY, a menswear chain focused on younger shoppers.
 |
Paul Topping accepts the Lifetime Achievement Award from sponsor ISG (represented by Managing Director Tony Detter, left) and Frontier’s Helen Alexander and Luke Barras-Hill |
He entered travel retail when he joined Trust House Forte as Operations Director for the channel and went on to become Managing Director three years later. Topping played a key role in the listing of the company on the UK stock market as Alpha Airports Group.
He was instrumental in the company’s drive to create new retail brands such as Books Plus, Glorious Britain, The Drug Store, Shirt Factor, Beauty Centre and others.
He also aided Alpha’s expansion overseas. Alpha was the first international travel retailer to win and operate a retail contract in India by way of a then unique three way arrangement (between airport , travel retailer and active local partner) at Cochin Airport.
Further expansion included a 20-year contract at Sanford Airport followed by another long-term deal for duty free in Sri Lanka. This was followed by the opening of stores in Delhi, the Maldives, Nepal as well as Labels (a domestic distribution business) and Inn On The Green (Sri Lanka’s first English pub).
Topping was named President Asia Aldeasa after the purchase of Alpha Group by Autogrill. He later joined Gebr Heinemann for a one-year assignment as Director-Asia to help establish the retailer in the region. In 2012 he joined Flemingo International as a Board Director to assist in repositioning the brand and expanding into emerging markets. The company has grown from 126 operations to over 200 over the last three years.
Topping is also well known as “the wine man of Sri Lanka” having spent over 18 years expanding wine sales in the sub-continent. He is a partner in Bangalore Soma Winery, a vineyard/winery/tourist business in India.
He now counts the Island of Sri Lanka as his home country and has been involved in a number of projects supporting tourism and local initiatives. He also writes under the name of “the whinging pom” and has many published articles covering his local and international travel experiences.
Crucially, Topping is recognised too for leadership (alongside Rakhita Jayawardena) in the inspirational project to develop a Travel Retail Tsunami Village after the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka.
He is also heavily involved in the Flemingo Foundation and notably the “˜Educate to Protect’ initiative to stop child abuse in Sri Lanka. To date over 35,000 children and adults have been reached through awareness and support sessions.
We join his colleagues at Flemingo and his many friends in the industry in saluting Paul Topping’s service to travel retail.
For the full results from this year’s Frontier Awards, click here.
