“For the past 10 years, I’ve been planning for dying,” says Rega co-founder and owner Roy Gandy, both amusingly bluntly and quickly in response to us asking what will define the company’s next 50 years. It isn’t Gandy being facetious, or indeed existentially bleak having woken up that morning of the interview on the wrong side of the bed (though his follow-up remark of “it could be tomorrow” may have been…), but more a reflection of his dedication to democratising the company so that it will seamlessly continue after he’s gone.
“That’s a major part of my life at the moment. Trying to set up a company that has the same ability to carry on making unusual niche products,” he explains. “We've been trying, for getting on for 30 years, to be a company that's got a different sort of management profile, i.e. no management. It didn't work for many years, and then for the last 10 it has clicked. We don't know why, but we do have a company now that is unusually collaborative… as close as you can get with zero hierarchy and zero authority.
