Livin’ on Easy Street

Posted by Raghav Somani

Written by Andrew Thomspon, for Time

Phil South relaxes on the deck as twilight descends on the French Riviera. The 22-year-old technician from Chelmsford, England, and his girlfriend, Gillian Fell, 26, are aboard easyCruiseOne, a no-frills, budget liner on its maiden voyage from Nice, the start of a tour of the French and Italian coasts that stretches between St. Tropez and Portofino. “There’s no way we could have gone on a cruise [before easyCruise],” says South. “This has opened barriers for people like us.”

Great; just as long as nobody expects luxury at low prices. Forget deck quoits, pink gins and white-jacketed stewards. The only extra on this voyage is a small jacuzzi perched at the stern of the ship. The trip costs as little as $50 a night, but food and drink aren’t included and most cabins are windowless. And they’re orange. Orange is everywhere. In the furniture, fixtures and staff uniforms. In the Sports Bar, bartenders struggle to lip-read orders against a soundtrack of thumping music and the high-pitched shrieks of revelers.

The cruise liner is the latest cheap-and-cheerful venture from Greek- Cypriot entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou. Ten years after U.K.-based easyJet — now one of the largest intra-European airlines — took off, there’s an easy way to do almost anything. In the last six months alone, the easy brand — owned by Stelios’ easyGroup — has lent its name to an online movie-rental operation, a mobile-phone operator and a pizza-delivery service. Expect budget motor insurance this month, and a bare-bones hotel in west London starting in July. To hear Stelios — as everyone calls him — tell it, easyGroup is the little guy’s champion. “This is not just about yuppies taking holidays in St. Tropez,” says Stelios. “This is about single mums staying at home, ordering pizza and watching a dvd with her kids.”

Maybe. But is easyGroup really changing everyday lives? Would anyone choose to use all of the easy services? Seeking answers, I headed for Milton Keynes to spend several days in easyLand.

I started by renting an easyCar. In a hardscrabble part of London’s Stockwell neighborhood, I met a satisfied customer; “If the only thing against it is where it’s located,” said Karl Anderson, a 32-year-old New Zealander who was returning his rental car, then the online booking system and cheap prices are “worth a little bit of inconvenience.” Having snatched a discount by booking online in advance, I paid $85 to rent a car for 24 hours (easyCar rewards early birds — had I just walked in, I would have paid around twice as much) and headed north.

Next stop: A weathered, squat building in Milton Keynes, home of the 10-screen easyCinema. At 2 p.m. on a Thursday, the place was almost empty. “It picks up during the evenings and weekends,” insisted one assistant, who represented half of the visible staff. Book your seat and print the ticket at home; scanning devices at theater doors mean you don’t even have to make eye contact with an employee. “It can’t be a bad idea,” says Emma Buckingham, a practical-minded 22-year-old job seeker. Buckingham made the 45-km trip from Luton to see the newly released Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, lamenting the cost of tickets closer to home. My ticket cost $6. Across the road at the staff-heavy Cineworld, we would have stumped up a third more for our seats.

Shunning popcorn, I looked out for the discount easyPizza delivery I’d ordered online more than a week earlier. Sure enough, setting the gold standard for brand synchronization, my pizza was driven to the cinema doors minutes after lights up. I drove back to London for an evening at home with a dvd rented from the online, pay-as-you-go easyCinema service. Price? Just $3.50. The picture? Easy Rider.

The next morning, nine passengers shuttled up the motorway to Luton airport inside a bright orange bus with a cracked windscreen and grinding brakes. A German and a Canadian seated to my right griped about paying $10 after missing the easyBus Holy Grail — the $2 starting price. Having paid $7.50, I kept quiet. “It changes your habits,” says Nicolas Legrand, a 25-year-old mechanical engineer from Nice, aboard our Boeing 737-700 easyJet flight from Luton to Nice. “It’s possible to get a flight for a few quid.” When chewing over a getaway, he says, “the first thing I do is check [easyJet's] website.” Not far from Legrand’s house in Nice, the easyCruiseOne was docked, set against the muted tones of the port like a brushstroke in orange across a Monet. “Have you ever seen a ship as orange as that?” beamed Stelios at the gangway.

There’s only one answer to that, but bright color hasn’t always translated into business success. EasyCinema has failed to expand beyond its flagship. EasyCar, launched in April 2000, has never broken even. The once buzzed-about easyInternetcafés have had a rough time, too. After the business was launched in Britain in 1999, investors soon valued it at $150 million — though there were only four cafés open for business. “We were all carried away by those days,” admits Stelios. Rapid expansion followed, although home Internet access was growing and mobile phones were becoming more Net-friendly. The result: easyInternetcafé lost around $170 million between 2001 and 2003. But having since franchised most of the 70 easyInternetcafés worldwide, the company hit profitability last year.

The granddaddy of the operation is still easyJet. Although Stelios stepped down as its chairman in November 2002, he and his family remains the carrier’s largest shareholder. In 2002, the airline earned record annual profits of $135 million. But brutal competition from rival budget carriers and moves by legacy airlines to restructure their own short-haul services drove the share price down, provoking talk last year — dismissed by Stelios — that he would take the business private. The share price has recovered of late, and with a cash balance upward of $950 million, the carrier is “unburstable” in the face of fare competition, insists JPMorgan analyst Chris Avery.

Stelios appears to have learned a little caution. A proposal for an easy-branded undertaker service got nixed. So did a cosmetic surgery service he’s since dubbed easyBoob. Outside investors are now encouraged to shoulder more of the risk in return for use of the easy brand. Under a 30-year licensing deal, for example, Danish telecom firm TDC rolled out in March the British virtual network operator easyMobile, leasing spare capacity from T-Mobile. “We’re not trying to become experts in every individual business,” says Stelios. “We’re partnering with the right people.” The danger, some analysts think, is that he will spread the brand too thin. Easy-branded companies market goods costing from as little as $0.50 for a digital music track to $1,900 for a week-long cruise. With that mix, “any brand consultant would tell you you’re crazy,” admits Stelios.

Back on board easyCruiseOne, it’s now 4:37 p.m. I know that because I’m wearing my easyWatch, the product of a licensing deal between the easyGroup and British watchmaker Zeon. Will I be wearing it when we hit St. Tropez? Sure. It’s not exactly bling, but it keeps time. Still, did it really, truly, have to be orange?