Name Ian Norman | ||
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Similar Katie Page, Gerry Harvey, Harvey Norman | ||
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Ian John Norman (c. 1938 – May 29, 2014) was an Australian businessman and retail executive. In 1982, Norman and Gerry Harvey co-founded Harvey Norman, an Australian retail chain which bears their names. Ian Norman remained a non-executive director of the company until his death in May, 2014.
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Early life and business
Norman and Harvey first met when both were working as traveling, door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen. The duo partnered to open their first store, which specialized in home appliances and electronics, in 1961, in Sydney. Their store, which was called Norman Ross, expanded to forty-two stores by 1979, with annual sales of AUS $240 million that year. Harvey and Norman sold the Norman Ross chain to Alan Bond in 1982.
The business partners then founded Harvey Norman, named for its founders, in 1982. The new chain offered consumer electronics, furniture and other household goods. The first store known as "Harvey Norman" opened at a shopping center in Auburn, New South Wales, in 1982, the same year as the sale.
Later life and death
By 2014, Ian Norman, who remained an executive, held 175 million shares of Harvey Norman, a 16.5% stake worth an estimated $560 million. Norman died from throat cancer at his home on the New South Wales Central Coast on May 29, 2014, at the age of 75. In later years he remained out of the public eye, was an intensely private man, but a generous philanthropist.