Dick Smith (entrepreneur)

Richard Harold Smith FRSA (born 18 March 1944) is an Australian entrepreneur and aviator.

He is the founder of Dick Smith Electronics, Australian Geographic and Dick Smith Foods.

Smith has had a long interest in aviation and holds a number of world records in the field.

A major philanthropist, he supports a number of charities and conservation efforts.

From his home in East Roseville, Smith attended primary school at Roseville Public School at which, for the fifth grade, he ranked academically 45th in a class of 47.

He attended North Sydney Technical High School.

After three years of French, he managed only 7% in the Intermediate Certificate examination.

He joined the 1st East Roseville Scout Group as a Wolf Cub in 1952, aged 8 and later as a Boy Scout and Rover until 1967, earning the Baden-Powell Award in 1966.

Smith gained his amateur radio licence at the age of 16.

He holds call sign VK2DIK.

In his early 20s, Smith worked as a taxi radio repair technician for several years.

He went on to complete his Leaving Certificate in 1961.

In 1968, with a A$610 investment by him and his then-fiancée Pip, Smith founded Dick Smith Car Radios, a small taxi radio repair business in the Sydney suburb of Neutral Bay, New South Wales, then later expanded into the car radio business at Gore Hill, naming himself the "Car-Radio 'Nut'".

This business later became electronics retailer Dick Smith Electronics which grew rapidly in the late 1970s, particularly through sales of Citizens Band radios and then personal computers, with annual sales of about A$17 million by 1978.

Smith took the business into Asia in 1978, opening a store in Ashley Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong's tourist shopping hub, and publishing an international catalogue edition until the store closed in 1980.

That year, stores were also opened in Northern California and Los Angeles.

In 1980, he sold the business to Woolworths for A$25 million.

Though Smith retained no shares nor role in the company after 1982, the business continued to trade with his name prominently displayed in every aspect of its operations.

Smith co-produced the documentary First Contact, in 1983, recounting the discovery, in 1930, of a flourishing native population in the interior highlands of New Guinea.

The film went on to win Best Feature Documentary at the 1983 Australian Film Institute Awards and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

In 1986, Smith founded Australian Geographic Pty Ltd, which published the Australian Geographic magazine, a National Geographic-style magazine focusing on Australia.

Smith did not want to greatly expand Australian Geographic, but his friend and CEO Ike Bain persuaded him to change his mind and soon it was a successful business.

Smith has been an advocate for the civil aviation industry in Australia, having been appointed by Prime Minister Bob Hawke to be chairman of the board of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) from February 1990 to February 1992.

He sold the business to Fairfax Media in 1995 for A$41 million.

He also served as deputy-chairman and chairman of the board of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA, the CAA's regulatory successor after the 1995 de-merger of the government's aviation operations including air traffic control) from 1997 until his resignation in 1999.

During his CAA tenure, a comprehensive reform plan (including the Class G Demonstration airspace reform) was devised to improve safety, streamline bureaucracy and reduce costs but, facing opposition from the incumbent commercial operators, particularly Qantas and Ansett, it was never implemented.

Smith claimed this was because there was resistance to increased competition in the market.

Smith faced the same obstacles as head of CASA and left, concluding that his work there had failed.

Smith has campaigned ever since for the reining in of over-regulation of the industry, particularly of flight training operators where layers of compliance costs associated with instructor status, approvals to carry out training and aircraft airworthiness have been blamed for ultimately crippling the Australian aviation industry.

Smith founded Dick Smith Foods in 1999, a response to foreign ownership of Australian food producers, particularly Arnott's Biscuits, which in 1997 became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Campbell Soup Company.

Dick Smith Foods only sold foods produced in Australia by Australian-owned companies and all profits went to charity.

Sales reached A$1.4 billion in 2014, before a sharp decline and closure of its then hundreds of stores in Australia and New Zealand by May 2016.

In 2015, he was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia.

He is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Smith's father was a salesman and sometime manager at Angus & Robertson's bookstore.

He started a business that failed when Smith was 17.

His mother was a housewife and his maternal grandfather pictorialist photographer Harold Cazneaux.

As a child, encountered in serious academic difficulties and, having a speech defect, called himself "Dick Miff".

In October 2015, he recommended a mass exit from the industry: "I absolutely recommend that people get out of aviation as quickly as they can, sell up their businesses and close down".

In 2018, Smith announced closure of the business in 2019, having distributed over A$10 million in profits to charity, citing aggressive competition from German-owned Aldi through a strategy including low-cost imports notwithstanding Aldi's claim to operate an Australian-first buying policy.