“I was the founder of a sandwich manufacturing business during the 1980s. Turnover reached ?1.5 million and I had more than 80 staff.
I was sold it in 1990 to a major catering company for in excess of ?500,000. I then devoted my time to bringing up my young family and in my free time pursued a love of show jumping and eventing, including training and selling ponies and horses.
I eventually realised that I enjoyed business too much to stay at home and subsequent projects have included mainly sales-based businesses. In 1997, I was asked to improve sales for a London-based sandwich producer.
During the period until 1999, the turnover of this business grew from 1,800 rounds per day to 12,000. After a while, I left to concentrate on training to teach pilates. This was mainly for my own benefit, as I had sustained several sports injuries and this enabled me to keep fit, while earning an income at the same time.
During 1998, on a family holiday to Devon, I realised how much my children, (then aged 7 and 10) loved the indoor playcentre we were visiting and they inspired me to open Arctic Jungle (www.artic-jungle.co.uk0), in Crawley in November 2002. I currently employ 25 staff and the business has a turnover of in excess of ?500,000.As a busy mum with now two teenagers, I got fed up with the drudgery of cooking and the need to feed them well. This inspired my next business venture, www.1click2cook.co.uk, which I launched in February 2007 and already has more than 1,500 registered users.
www.1click2co.ok.uk is aimed at time-poor parents and professionals and takes away tedious menu decision-making.
On the website, mothers can generate a detailed shopping list in weekly email sent direct to a member’s inbox ? so that they can literally just click and cook. Nutritional values of the recipes are listed and local fresh food partners are linked to the site. They even offer a discount to all subscribers to the site.”