MANY TIMES A VIRGIN

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A huge silver ball slides ever so deliberately down the pulsing neon face of a building in Times Square, and off leaps one of the world's most wildly imaginative entrepreneurs. It is Richard Branson, the raffish British tycoon who has splashed his company's Virgin logo on everything from airlines to a bridal service. The occasion: the opening of a $15 million, biggest-anywhere, 75,000-sq.-ft. new Virgin music-and-entertainment megastore.

Branson, a self-described "adventure capitalist," is a business-creation engine who was clearly born in the wrong place. In England wealth is traditionally inherited rather than created, which makes him an odd duck in the land of mad cows. He belongs in the U.S., the wellspring of genius entrepreneurs and shameless hucksters alike, which is why the flashy Times Square stunt is a perfect way for Branson to signal the next phase of his U.S. expansion. Says Ian Duffell, president of Virgin Retail Group in North America: "We've planted our flag here."

The new music-and-entertainment store is a dare to U.S. competition. Four other stores are planned for New York. Along with five now operating in California, they will give Virgin 64 of these new-wave entertainment centers in 12 countries. There are plans for 30 more in the U.S. by 1999. Next week Virgin Atlantic Airways, Branson's iconoclastic transatlantic carrier, adds the lucrative Washington-London route to its expanding U.S. service. Virgin Publishing is poised to snag American book readers. In Europe, Branson is starting up a cut-price airline, Virgin Express; he's part of a group taking over the ailing Eurostar train service under the English Channel; he has launched an over-the-phone life-insurance and health-insurance business in Britain called Virgin Direct; and his new British mutual fund is going gangbusters. As if all this weren't enough to keep him busy, in November he hopes to fly around the world nonstop in a balloon to set a new world record.

Floating high over the Times Square store is a 40-ft. sign for Virgin Cola, a somewhat odd ad placement as the product isn't sold here. But that's going to change too. Branson's Virgin Cola company is going to take on American icons Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola on their home turf, beginning in July. This is a plan that most marketers would pronounce foolhardy--if only it rose to that level.

But these are Branson odds. He has amassed a billion-dollar fortune by doing things that business strategists suggest he shouldn't: he targets well-established industries with entrenched competitors--airlines, records, retailing--and then attacks head on. In the process, the affable balloonist garners huge amounts of publicity from an unending assortment of goofball stunts and daredevil deeds.

Behind that eccentric entrepreneur is a bulldog competitor and a sore loser. Virgin usually wins because Branson can do the mundane spectacularly well and because he has an almost unerring ability to connect with consumers, particularly younger ones. Those business instincts are matched by an ability to motivate people who work for him. And who wouldn't want to--Branson seems hell-bent on making sure that everybody, but everybody, is having as much fun as he is.