Alex Reilley tells us about how a ‘Game of Thrones’ approach to business, which involved defining ‘the Cause’, enabled him and his team to turn Loungers from a small café-bar chain into a hugely successful nationwide brand. ‘The biggest challenge was dealing with the scale,’ reveals Alex in the second of our ‘7, 17, 70’

As investors in consumer brands, it can be dispiriting to read the papers, bombarded with tales of woeful mismanagement and a gloomy malaise, a self-fulfilling prophecy fast becoming a hardened reality. It can be just as depressing walking the streets and seeing prime Central London vacancies adorned with the red banners of closing down sales,