- Source of Wealth: Business (Internet and Retail – Asos)
- Age: 52
- Birth Place: London, United Kingdom
- Marital Status: Divorced (Janice Robertson)
- Full Name: Nicholas John Robertson
- Nationality: British
- Date of Birth: November 1967
- Ethnicity: English
- Occupation: Businessman (Co-Founder of ASOS.com)
- Education: Canford School
- Children: 3
Robertson has brightened up a lot of women’s working days as the co-founder of Asos, the go-to website for affordable online fashion fixes that are delivered by 2 pm the next day. Customers can buy up-to-the-minute styles of the kind worn by Kate Moss, Sienna Miller, and Alexa Chung at high-street prices.
This former media buyer set up the website, which stocks its own-brand clothes as well as mainstream labels, in 2000 with Quentin Griffiths, previously an advertising executive. Robertson’s own background is in adland — first at Young Rubicam in 1987 and later in his own product placement business with Griffiths. As the great-grandson of Austin Reed, the founder of the eponymous menswear shops, retailing is in his blood. The international market is growing, and Asos already has country-specific sites outside Britain, with a Spanish version planned and an Australian one considered. Robertson said Asos would launch between three and five new operations this financial year. His brother, Nigel, sold his Scoot business directory firm for £30m in 1998 to back Asos’s float. At the time, the launch raised just £2.8m on the AIM, but Asos is now valued at more than £1.5 billion. Robertson’s stake is worth £164m. Share option gains and £16m of recent sales take him to £177m after tax. He currently has a net worth of $265.5 million.