Press Release 23rd October 2009
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Alexandra Forth of VIP Pets
Meet Alexandra Forth, the
entrepreneur behind the VIP Pets group of companies
based in the Costa del Sol. Alexandra, or Alex as she
likes to be known, is an accomplished businesswoman who
always dreamed of fulfilling her childhood dream of
creating a haven for dogs (and cats), and now that she
has finally achieved it, we find out more about her.
Alex was born in Fulham, London but she spent the first
years of her life living in Edinburgh with her English
mother and Scottish father. When her parents divorced,
her mother moved into her grandfather’s house with
seven-year-old Alex and her younger sister Susan. It
was the strength of character that defined her mother,
and the encouragement and vision of her grandfather
Albert, that shaped Alex’s independent goal-oriented
character. “I had a lovely childhood,” Alex recalls. “My
mother was exceptionally strict, with set values.”
Alex remembers how her grandfather
“installed a belief in me that I could do anything or be
anything I wanted to. He used to say to me ‘if you can
see it; if you can feel it; if you can visualise doing
it; then you will achieve it.’ He said it was all in the
mind and in the heart.”
Albert would sneak Alex down to the
train station and tell her to pick a train. Much to her
mother’s annoyance, he would then take her on that train
to wherever it was going on a day trip. This type of
attitude gave Alex the belief that has served her well
over the years; giving her an adventurous, ‘go get it’
spirit that clearly played an important part in her
later successes.
“I attribute much of who I am to
him,” she says. When remembering the lessons of her
mother, Alex explains: “She taught me from a very early
age to think for myself, to make my own decisions, and
used to say: ‘If you make your bed, you lie in it. You
made the decision now you work through it. And you get
yourself out of it’.” When Alex was 14, she longed to
have her own dog. Her mother told her she could not have
one, but one day her grandfather sneaked her off to see
a friend of his whose poodle was going to have a litter.
“This friend used to show poodles. And all these poodles
had their little diamante collars and looked fabulous. I
was in love with the shape of the poodle!” she says.
Alex decided she wanted one and regularly snuck off to
see them at the woman’s home. Her grandfather died when
she was 16. At 17, she went to Crufts at Olympia and
became mesmerised by it all. “It was amazing! I couldn’t
get enough of it,” she says. Her teenage years were
spent in Fulham, and her first job, whilst still at
school, was at a local bakery. The feeling of freedom
and independence that having a job gave Alex developed
into a sense of urgency to get working as soon as
possible. She chose work over a college education
because “it was too slow for me,” she says. “I’d had a
taste of working. I had a plan. My plan was to have
children whilst I was young, to continue to work, and
then, when the children where five or six and at school,
I could develop a career.” She says. “I used to open the
papers on the way to work and I used to see all these
high salaries being advertised and I would think ‘I want
to earn that’. I didn’t know in what field at that
stage.” After the bakery, Alex worked at Baric Computing
Bureau in Queensway (when computers worked on paper tape
and punch cards) in the evenings and at Aircall Limited
during the day (which carried out a messaging service in
the days before mobile phones). Her time at Aircall
exposed Alex to people from all walks of life, sectors
and social strata. She learnt how to deal with people at
all levels, from the homeless to aristocrats like the
Rothschilds. “You quickly learn how to relate to people
from all walks of life,” says Alex. After she married,
when she had just turned 19, she moved out of her
grandfather’s house in Fulham and moved with her husband
Denis Forth and baby boy Marc out of London to Aylesbury
in Buckinghamshire and got her first dog, Marcia. “I
used to walk to Aylesbury, which was a few miles away,
with my son in the pram and Marcia tied to it. In these
more innocent times, we used to park the prams outside
the shops. It seems inconceivable now. So, I was away
from my friends and family, and I thought ‘I can’t do
this’, I can’t just sit around and do nothing,” she
says. Through a neighbour she signed up to do Tupperware
parties. Within three months she was a manager, heading
a team, with a company car (she didn’t even have a
driving licence). “And there it was. My independence was
born. I didn’t look back. That was it,” Alex enthuses.
After the birth of her second son Paul, they moved to
Bletchley and there she became involved in the property
development market. “From an early age my two passions
had always been dogs and property, so I relished the
chance. However, one of my greatest achievements is the
close and loving bond I have with my sons” she says.
This career move was one which her husband Denis found
hard to accept, as “he wanted me at home, looking after
the children. He hadn’t really bargained for a career
person, and that period was a difficult one.” She says:
“I was trying to balance what I wanted to do while
respecting my husband’s wishes.” Alex tried to give up
the career and stay at home, but she is not one for
sitting idly around. Around this time she was showing
dogs and set up her own grooming parlour. Alex and Denis
grew apart and they decided to separate, remaining dear
friends. This was 30 years ago. Alex moved on and
married Charles, a lawyer, and although they later
divorced, they remained close friends and about eight
years ago decided to move to Spain together.
Alex moved here with just 6,000 euros to
her name and got a job in property sales. Charles
returned to England but Alex stuck it out. Eventually
she started her own property company and after some time
teamed up with Jim Moore and Brad Rosser and set up what
would later become a multi-million pound global empire.
The success of this venture has left Alex financially
secure and, for the first time in her life, she felt she
could truly fulfil her dream of creating the perfect dog
resort. In May 2009, Alex launched VIP Pets, and the
rest, as they say, is history.
