IN the 1980s, Jacqueline Gold admits she was a power dresser. "I tried to emulate what I thought a business person was like," she says.

"I was very assertive and aggressive and wore shoulder pads, the lot. One day someone told me I looked like I'd walked straight out of Dynasty.

"Eventually I thought, this is ridiculous, I am just going to be me. If, you are good at what you do the results speak for themselves."

Ms Gold, chief executive of Ann Summers and Knickerbox, is one of Britain's most successful businesswomen. She has been voted the second most powerful woman in retail by Retail Week, one of Britain's top ten most powerful women by Cosmopolitan and one of Britain's 100 most influential women by the Daily Mail.

With a gross annual sales of more than £155m, Ann Summers is one of the most profitable private companies in the UK.

Its parent company, Gold Group International, includes other business interests in property, air travel and Birmingham City Football Club, and the combined family fortune is estimated to be £515m.

At the age of 21, working as a junior wage clerk in her father's business, Ms Gold saw the potential of selling sexy lingerie and sex toys to women in the privacy of their own homes - and the Ann Summers party was born.

She worked her way through the ranks of the company and was made chief executive in 1987, and quickly transformed Ann Summers into a multi-million pound concern.

But as her stores began to pop up on every high street, the protests became louder.

She fought through negative attitudes to build up her shops, which offered women a halfway house between the Marks & Spencer lingerie department and the sex shop.

"Everyone at first said it would just be a fad," she says.

"I was very positive about the idea - I had a gut feeling about it. Whenever I have an idea, I speak to people about it and see if they are supportive, but I think that gut feeling is the most important thing.

"Yes, I had people say that it was just a fad, and to give it two years, and that it wouldn't last.

"Well, almost 20 years later we are still going strong.

"I started off when I was 21 in 1981, and the first year the turnover was £83,000. This year the forecast turnover is £185m.

"That is absolutely staggering to me, and I think more than anybody I have to pinch myself every day to check I'm not dreaming about the way we have grown."

Her basic business idea was creating an environment where people felt comfortable in showing that they enjoyed having sex.

"People love having sex and couples quite rightly want to experiment - why should they have to go somewhere they don't feel comfortable?" she says.

"I think that we are about encouraging a healthy and positive, fun attitude towards sex."

The place where Ms Gold believes that attitude is alive and kicking is in the North-East. "The further north you go, the less inhibited people are, I think," she says.

"We do really, really well in the North. I think more people are more relaxed and more likely to be looking to have fun.

"We have two stores in Newcastle, one in the MetroCentre, and in Middlesbrough, and I think it is definitely an area we would look to open more stores.

"The MetroCentre store is doing fabulously, and I think there is more scope to expand."

Ms Gold has come a long way from her power-dressing days, when she felt she had to compete against men. But she does not believe she is a stringent feminist, more a pragmatist.

"Things for women are a lot better than they used to be," she says. "But there is still a long, long way to go.

"I think it is such a shame that women are still facing an uphill battle. I have some very talented women in my business. My managing director is a woman and I wouldn't exchange her for the world.

"Businesses are missing out because they are not recognising that women have a lot of talent.

"I know I was uncertain when I started out, hence the power dressing, and I did make mistakes.

"But particularly as a woman in business, you have to believe in yourself, and I believed passionately, and still do, about what I am doing.

"I think people have very different ideas of what a feminist is and I'm not sure I am one in the strictest sense, but I do believe in equality and in empowering women - and I want to fly the flag for women."

Ms Gold also hits out at the lack of flexible working and good quality childcare for women in work.

"A lot of people choose the family life, but so many women are torn because there is not enough suitable childcare," she says.

"That is something that angers me, because I really feel that if we want to make Britain more entrepreneurial, we have to free these women to be able to do that."

Ann Summers now has more than 7,500 party organisers, and 122 high street stores in the UK, Ireland and the Channel Islands, and two in Spain.

Future plans include further outlets in the UK and worldwide, while the recent takeover of Knickerbox has added another 25 stores in the UK to the group, plus five franchises in Iceland and Greece.