A young North-East woman has gone from owning a fish and chip shop to selling designer labels at her shop at the MetroCentre. Lucia Charnock finds out more.

JEANETTE Davies is only 23 years old and already she is a successful businesswoman. Winner of an Internet competition organised by the regional development agency One NorthEast to help support women in business, she had previously owned and managed her own fish and chip shop in her home town of Sunderland.

Now the young entrepreneur, who has an HND in Hospitality and Catering Management, has shifted her focus to designer fashion and it was her plans and ideas for her shop that won her the award.

The mysteriously named Dusty's Daughter has just opened in The Village at the Gateshead MetroCentre and sells designer brands such as Gas Jeans, Sonneti, Chippie and Johnny Loves Rosie. It is also one of the first shops in the North-East to stock Mode In Pelle shoes, popular catwalk shoes from a southern-based firm. The boutique will also be stocking a new label, Kate Fearnley, an up-and-coming local designer and a graduate from the University of Northumbria.

Jeanette is a self confessed fashion slave and it was her love of anything new that led her to take the plunge into fashion retailing.

"I have always had an interest in fashion and so when I felt like I wanted a change from the catering business, the chance to open my own store was very exciting.

"I hope to be able to provide shoppers with a friendly atmosphere and a one-to-one service," she says.

"Fashion is about individuality and saying something about your personality. It is making a statement about yourself. If you look at the High Street retailers, they are all the same and I wanted things that were a little bit different."

She said she wanted the boutique to be exclusive and so she signed up to the Ministry of Design, a Newcastle-based, non-profit-making organisation that aims to encourage young designers and young female entrepreneurs.

It was here that she discovered Kate Fearnley's range, but she decided to stock some of the more well-known designed brands as well to help encourage people into the shop so that they will then look at the less well-known names.

She also wanted give the shop a name that would screech out that the boutique had young women in mind. She unearthed the name Dusty's Daughter when she was going through a bag of records and found a DJ called David's Daughter.

"I just amended it because I thought daughter was very feminine but David wasn't. Dusty just came to me and I thought it was a modern name," she says.

The shop has been open for four weeks now and although Jeanette is not yet drawing a salary from her venture, she says everything is going to plan. "Sales are as forecast and it is still growing and I still have plans for the place. Hopefully, I can go on from here."

Jeanette loves being her own boss and is relishing the challenges that will make her business work and see her expansion plans through to reality. "I am really into yoga and have been training as a teacher but that has fallen through because I am so into the business. I want to expand to different centres in the region - not Newcastle and Sunderland but smaller places that do not have designer shops.

"It is just about being in control of my own destiny and my own direction. Everything I achieve is by my own work and, likewise, if I fail it is down to me. But really it is just very rewarding.