Gary Lubner

For Belron CEO Gary Lubner, the company has been in his blood since the day he was born. Whether it was a job over the school holidays, or listening to conversations about the company over dinner, Gary has been involved with the company in some capacity for most of his life. He recalls spending time from an early age with his father and grandfather as they ran the business, and says he learned different lessons from both of them.

“My grandfather was absolutely obsessed with customers and people. I remember very clearly riding around with him in his car, visiting customers. He used to have a little notebook, where he wrote down observations to make improvements on later. What I learned from my dad was that no one in the organisation was more important than anyone else. This created an ethos where everyone who was contributing to the organisation was treated with respect, dignity, and understanding.”

Gary wasn’t always keen on joining the family business: he studied finance at the University of Cape Town and, after qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1981, joined Arthur Andersen in South Africa. He joined Belron after earning his MBA from the London Business School in 1991, and has been there for more than 20 years.

Gary’s early experiences with the company in South Africa were hugely formative for him. “It’s important to understand that staff aren’t just workers: they are whole people with all sorts of other pressures. Growing up in South Africa, that was very clear to me. On top of the normal business challenges, you had real political issues in play.”