First Thierry Henry and then Tiger Woods go and do something so stupid that it leaves the reputation they've spent years building in tatters.

Leave aside the embarrassment  they're both going through, what about the amount of money they'll potentially lose in sponsorship and endorsements – is Roger Federer going to advertise Gillette on his own now?!

I’ve seen the news footage of both infamous incidents and cringed at how easily their carefully crafted brands have been massively devalued in two moments of madness.

It reminded me of that Gerald Ratner moment when he told the world what he really thought of the products he sold... and in doing so signed the death warrant for his own business.

I’m not comparing Mila’s brand strength to that of Henry or Woods but I do think that it's fundamentally important to the success of any business and that it’s something which needs to be protected and nurtured.

Throughout this year, we've focused on promoting our brand – in the press and online and I think we’ve been successful in communicating what Mila stands for in terms of quality products, quality service and added value.  What we’ve spent even more time on is making sure that there is substance behind it and that the reputation we're building is real and protected from the kind of disasters that customers will always remember.

It's a fact of life that customers tend to recall failures rather than successes and talk about things that've gone wrong rather than right.

If the Henry and Woods fiascos have taught us anything it's that reputations that've taken years to build can potentially be destroyed in an instant. In my view, the challenge we all face is to try to ensure those disasters don’t happen in the first place but also that the brand's strong enough to withstand them if they do.