Entrepreneur helping others to follow

AS a 17-year-old working in a Newcastle department store, Lynn Gate would look at the managers in their smart suits and imagine wearing the same one day.

But she was not thinking about working her way up in the shop. She planned to be an entrepreneur with her own business.

"I was very ambitious and always wanted to do something for myself; to be in control of my own destiny," she said.

"It was not about wanting to tell other people what to do, but neither did I want to be at someone else's beck and call. In companies, people hide behind each other and are scared to own up to things. I never felt like that. I knew I had the capability to take responsibility for my own actions."

Ms Gate, 43, recently sold property on the south bank of the Tyne at Gateshead to a developer who plans to build an office complex there. And, while her role as managing director of LG Developments and The Storage Company is fulfilling, it is helping others to get started in business that really excites her.

After she left the department store, Ms Gate became a representative for Andrew Brownsword greetings cards, covering an area from Aberdeen to Sheffield in her Ford Fiesta.

The job helped to strengthen the independent streak she developed growing up as an only child in Dunston - but she was still not where she wanted to be - in charge.

Her big chance soon came, though it was not obvious at the time. A Birmingham-based manufacturer of shop-fittings offered her a job managing its new retail outlet in Scotswood Road, Newcastle. When a director left nine months later, Ms Gate was given the chance to buy the business for £45,000.

"I was 27 and all I had was £1,000 equity in my house."

She borrowed £25,000 from the NatWest bank and the company she was buying from offered to lend her the rest over a year.

It was the mid-1980s and she could not have chosen a better business in a better location. Just across the river, something called the MetroCentre was taking shape.

Under her ownership, the business went from strength to strength, with turnover increasing from £90,000 to £250,000 in the first year.

With a showroom taking up the ground floor, friends and contacts soon asked Ms Gate if they could rent office space from her.

She said: "I was nave really. I didn't bother with leases, but from there it grew and soon the first and second floors were full.

"I had a great relationship with the tenants - in fact, some of them are still there. However, I was sub-letting, so I asked if I could buy the building."

Three weeks later, she tripled her investment by selling to a nearby importer and exporter of clothes who had seen his warehouse go up in flames and needed storage space urgently.

While the profit was welcome, it left Ms Gate with no rental income and in need of new premises. She took a small unit in the city's west end, and soon married and had a daughter, Rebekah, who is now 15.

However, 18 months later, she was divorced and lost everything, including her home.

With the help of contacts, including the businessman who bought the Scotswood Road building, she found her feet and a new partner, Malcolm, who owned a kitchen company.

She said: "The most important thing was that I still had credibility with my suppliers, which meant I could start to grow the business again. I had no other option than to go forward. I had a successful business and was determined to keep it going."

Starting from scratch meant finding new premises. A building in South Shore Road, Gateshead, became available for £64,000.

"At 30,000sq ft, it was ten times the size of our previous building, but there had always been talk of the Baltic being developed and the whole area being regenerated. I took a gamble and bought it with the last £7,000 we had as a deposit.

"It was a huge risk, but I work on the principle of the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.

"We went through a difficult patch with cash flow, ironically because of the regeneration and all the building and reconstruction work that was going on. But I have learnt to look for an opportunity in every event that happens, even the negative ones."

Coca-Cola and computer logistics companies needing storage space were the first to sign up.

"These customers were taking the business in a particular direction.

"It made me think that other companies must have places to store things - not just big companies, but smaller businesses that needed workshop space; people who did not want to commit to long leases or to pay agent's fees and did not want to put their homes on the line. They just needed somewhere to move into to get their business going, whether it was warehousing or office space. I knew what it was like for them because I had been there myself.

"The great thing about it was that the big companies who were paying large amounts were helping to subsidise the smaller businesses to get off the ground."

In February 2002, she accepted an offer on the South Shore Road premises and she moved that summer to her current property at Dunston, Tyne and Wear. She bought the 20,000sq ft building and one-and-a-half acres of development land last year.

Ms Gate has applied the same formula that proved so successful in Gateshead, attracting major clients such as ICI Paints, Wrigleys, Top Shop, TSG, Seven Seas and Gateshead Borough Council who needed storage space, while small businesses took up office space.

Plans for next year include developing the land into small workshop units - all offered on the same terms as she now offers to small businesses -a month's rent in advance and a month's notice to quit.

"My view is: 'why make it complicated?' Small businesses have to deal with enough bureaucracy and struggle on while big business takes all the big grants.

"I have not had any grant-funding or any help whatsoever. I have got where I am by sheer hard work and determination. I know exactly what it is like for them."

As a member of the Entrepreneurs' Forum, she has found she is not alone.

She said: "I really think people should treat entrepreneurs with a little bit more respect.

"Companies that start with one to five employees are the backbone of this country, but they are overlooked every single time.

"Now I am in a position to help small businesses, I am genuinely passionate about doing something for them.

"If I can make it easier for them to get started, that is when I feel I have achieved something."

Last summer, she opened premises at Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, in partnership with City and Northern, and the sale of the South Shore Road building also went through last year.

And while Ms Gate says she is not driven by money or success, these days, she does get to wear great suits.

* For more information on the Entrepreneurs' Forum, call 0870 850 2233 or visit www.entrepreneursforum.net