14 Virgin companies that even Richard Branson could not stop going bust

Virgin.com

It's fair to say that Richard Branson has taken a scatter-gun approach to his professional life since he started his first business in 1966. The mogul has since launched more than 400 companies under the Virgin brand. Virgin has plastered its name on everything from airlines, to wine clubs, to underwear.

It should come as no surprise that some of these have become spectacular failures.

It times of failure, Branson has said recognizing mistakes and recovering are essential skills for an entrepreneur:

My mother drummed into me from an early age that I should not spend much time regretting the past. I try to bring that discipline to my business career. Over the years, my team and I have not let mistakes, failures or mishaps get us down. Instead, even when a venture has failed, we try to look for opportunities, to see whether we can capitalize on another gap in the market.

Below are 15 examples of Branson's less successful ventures. Some lasted just months, while others were profitable for many years, until becoming victims of changing times.

Mallory Russell compiled an earlier version of this report.

Student magazine: Branson dropped out of school at 16 to start a magazine called Student.

The first issue of student was released in 1968.

"There wasn't a national magazine run by students, for students. I didn't like the way I was being taught at school. I didn't like what was going on in the world, and I wanted to put it right," he told Business 2.0 Magazine.

The magazine didn't run quite as well as Branson had hoped, so he started a record mail-order business that he advertised in the magazine. The mail-order business proved so popular that he ditched the magazine and opened his own record shop. He called it Virgin.

Virgin Cola: In a major brand extension, Branson launched Virgin Cola in 1994.

Virgin Cola was the most highly-publicized of Virgin's failed businesses. The drink, which was soft-launched exclusively on Virgin's planes and in its cinemas, managed to peak at a small but significant 0.5% market share in the US, according to The Guardian. Production of the drink stopped in 2012, after the US soft drink giants fought back.

However, Branson enjoyed the failure: "I got to drive a tank into Times Square and also to create a cheeky bottle in the shape of Pamela Anderson," he wrote in a blog post.

"That business taught me not to underestimate the power of the world's leading soft drink makers. I'll never again make the mistake of thinking that all large, dominant companies are sleepy!"

Virgin Vodka: Another Virgin drinks product which failed to take off.

It was not just Virgin Cola, but the whole of Virgin Drinks (also launched in 1994), which turned out to be a failure, according to The Guardian. One of the most surprising of these products is perhaps Virgin Vodka.

The entirety of Virgin Drinks — including Virgin Vines, Virgin Energy Shot, and Virgin Ooze (a fizzy alcoholic drink) — folded in 2007.

However, Virgin Wines, which was sold to Direct Wines in 2005 and was bought out in 2013 by management, is thriving. It is on track to grow its business to £50 million ($73 million) by 2018, according to The Drinks Business.