Britons living in Bulgaria. Guide to Bulgaria, Sofia and Varna

Trouble in Never-Never Land - TIME


Bloom cultivated a goatee to hide his youth, spent half an hour daily with his hairdresser. Bloom proved as poor at finance as he was spectacular at promotion. Bloom then bought out lifeless Rolls, an old razor maker, to use as his corporate vehicle, expanded into dishwashers, refrigerators, trading stamps, rental TV, and even cheap holiday tours for Britons on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. He married a dazzling blonde secretary, got himself a black Rolls and her a white Mercedes, took a Park Lane apartment and a Riviera villa, and bought a gleaming, $1,000,000, 376-ton yacht named Ariane. His success drew other hopefuls into a crowded market and aroused older appliance makers to cut costs and retail prices. His unorthodox selling and barebone prices quickly cornered 10% of the washer market. In 1958 he finally hit the right chord: he splurged $1,187 on an ad in the tabloid Daily Mirror (circ. In one of the City's most furious trading sessions, Rolls skidded from $1.18 to 15¢ a share. In recent weeks, however, London's City has buzzed about troubles at Rolls, and the price of the company's stock has fluttered wildly. Last week, just two years and 51 days after John Bloom's stock was listed, it fell with a mighty crash. Nine minutes before the exchange closed, Rolls announced its voluntary liquidation, thus bringing down the cornerstone of Bloom's $70 million empire. On Bloom's rising reputation and Rolls's rising washing-machine sales, the hot stock doubled. Raised in London's squalid East End, John Bloom quit school at 16, stumbled from one get-rich scheme to another. Receipts from Rolls's "never-never"—as Britons call installment plans—were passed on to Merchant Sir Isaac Wolfson, who had bankrolled Bloom with a $28 million loan. Spotting trouble, Sir Isaac withdrew his support and sped the downfall. The ad drew 7,000 replies from prospering Britons—and Bloom soon had a firm set up to sell them. The Geometry of Music Case Study: Autism and Vaccines Why Montana Is Turning Blue Clinton's Experience Debate Maimed by the Mob Another Problem with Biofuels? The Race to Revote in FloridaIs There Life on Saturn's Moon? Through it all, he flamboyantly plugged himself as a friend of the housewife, pal of the working man, scourge of the City and enemy of the Establishment. Within four years after he began, Bloom was a millionaire.