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John Hitchcox: An Introduction
John Hitchcox is a well-known entrepreneur and businessman in London. There is a joke about him that John Hitchcox likes to crack whenever he opens a new development.
Founding Yoo Group and Global Presence
John Hitchcox is the chairman and founder of the Yoo Group. Yoo Group is a residential and hotel design company.
Since its inception in 1999, Yoo Group has worked on various homes, hotels, theatres, branded residents, and more.
In an interview, John Hitchcox asked what is the difference between a doctor and an architect. The answer was a doctor needs to bury his mistakes.
Yoo Group has been working in 29 countries across six continents.
A Unique Approach to Development
Since the very beginning, the chairman and founder of the Yoo Group has been saying that Yoo is not a typical developer. Yoo surely cares about what it left.
John mentioned this idea as place-making, and he replied to it in a Zoom interview period. At that period, John was preparing to open a restaurant for a well-known UK project, the celebrity hangout in the Cotswolds.
He also mentioned that the group creates spaces where like-minded people can meet, and get together in well-designed buildings.
Moreover, those buildings are like high-rise luxury studios, similar to one that he launched in India last year. The buildings can be holiday villas, and one remains under construction in Vietnam.
Also, those buildings can be lakeside apartments, or the buildings may belong to the billionaire pound redevelopment of the entire neighbourhood.
The Beginnings of a Real Estate Visionary
John was 19 years old when he asked his mum for 45 Pounds, and he wanted to buy a suit to impress the bank manager.
After some years, John secured a 100 per cent loan against the 19,200 pounds valued house. Hitchcox turned the property into two flats and he needed to spend 13,000 Pounds. Eight months later, he flipped them for 19,000 pounds each.
In an interview, John confessed that originally, he had 7,000 pounds for the renovation. And he laughed and added that he discovered the meaning of cost overruns as well as time overruns on his first project.
And, those flats became the pillar of John’s great success. In 1991, he made a partnership with fellow property developer Hary Handelsman to cocreate the Manhattan Loft Company.
Then he started buying former factories in Clerkenwell and Southwark and converted them into New York-style loft apartments. Hitchcox imported the concept of loft living from across the pond, at the same time, he initiated luxury design appointments to the world.
Olympia Events, formerly known as Olympia London, has been an iconic London venue for 140 years. The iconic venue inspires visitors to experience a wide array of events in London.
This 1.3 bn Pounds development is being financed and managed by the owners Deutsche Finance International and Yoo Capital.
Back in February, the Olympia London hosted a party on behalf of the high fashion sports label Moncler Gebnuis. This event was attended by Pharrell William, Naomi Campbell, Justin Bieber, and more.
This event saw a queue of 10,000 people in the cold to get in. So, John was very happy. One reporter asked John that he has been in the development game for four decades, and what continues to fuel his ambitions.
Then, he said that he is dyslexic. So, anyone should do things that he likes doing.