Company blossoms from zero income to a turnover of £16m

He had left his job in marketing in the textile industry after he saw the industry starting to slide, and he and wife Angela decided they would set up their own business.

The question was, which business would they go into?

Mr Barratt said: "We were fortunate enough to have some capital behind us and we wanted to work for ourselves.

"The fastest-growing area at the time was micro computers, but we didn't know anything about that.

"The second-fastest growth area was leisure because people had more and more leisure time.

"They were becoming wealthier and able to afford more.

"I had always quite liked gardening and being outside, and we used to visit garden centres and realised that was a growing business area."

Mrs Barratt said: "We literally drove around the country and decided to come back to the North-East, where Peter was from.

"We had met at university in Leeds and lived over in the North-West but there were a lot of garden centres already there and we couldn't see a market.

"So, we considered Leeds but then Newcastle and Tyneside came out on top."

The couple found a small bedding plant nursery in Gosforth, near Newcastle, run by an elderly couple who hoped to retire, but did not own the freehold on the land.

Mr Barratt said: "We tried to buy the freehold through the couple, but we got three weeks from completion and the chap died of angina in the middle of the night.

"His wife said she still wanted us to go through with the purchase, but to prove continuation of tenancy she had to prove that she could still run the business for another year.

"So I worked for her for a year for no pay.

"It was very useful to learn how to grow bedding plants.

"We managed to buy the land eventually and the lady worked for us for another 15 years in the garden centre, which was great."

The couple agree that the hardest thing about expanding their business is finding suitable sites.

So in 1992, when Mr Barratt got a call from the chairman of Jennings car dealers, he set his sights on his next store.

Jennings had built a centre at Stockton on its land in Yarm Road.

Before they could open the centre, a company known as Gardencentres paid Jennings a fortune to get hold of the site.

Mr Barratt said: "The garden company was trying to set up a national chain of garden centres and were absolutely desperate for sites. They ran it for three years together with 15 other sites around the country and it went into administration very quickly.

"I got a call from the chairman of Jennings, who was a long-time customer of our Gosforth site, and he said 'you are the best operator in the area, why don't you buy it?'

"So, we did a deal at a reduced rent. No one could have paid the rates that Gardencentres was paying.

"We bought the freehold from Jennings about four years ago, so now we own the freehold of both sites."

Starting off in bedding plants, Peter Barratts was to grow and grow into almost a department store.

Today, it sells barbeques, garden furniture, gifts, clothes, shoes, books, cards and Christmas lights.

Mrs Barratt is in charge of buying the giftware, clothing and homeware, while her husband looks after the outdoor living area.

She said: "The first giftware we ever had in was Norfolk Lavender then we dabbled with cards and books but it was very small at the beginning.

"It is these sections, through, which have grown massively.

"Clothing is one of the big growth areas, even though it seems to be struggling on the high street."

The company recently moved from having its head office at its Gosforth centre to a separate head office in Team Valley.

It needed the warehouse space the office was taking up at Gosforth, so moved its warehouse and marketing, buying and accounts departments into the head office, which now employs about 50 people.

An intricate sales log shows Peter and Angela exactly what is selling and what is not, day to day and week to week, so they can take immediate decisions.

Mr Barratt said: "Our bank manager says to us that many national companies don't go into the level of detail that we do.

"We can react instantly to the data we receive so we know what people want at a certain time.

"Some of the large national chains bring something in for a season, and if it doesn't sell they just don't replace it the following season.

"Our plant buyer is always looking at the five, six-day weather forecast because that can have a huge impact.

"We can tell immediately how fast things are selling and what needs to be discounted."

Because of their efficient sales system, and head office, the Barratts say they need to open at least one more garden centre to make it more worthwhile.

Mr Barratt said: "We are doing all this hard work for just two centres.

"We are searching and pricing the goods, and it makes more economic and practical sense to have more stores.

"We are looking in the Leeds, Harrogate area.

"But the problem is finding a site. It won't be an all-singing, all-dancing centre like Stockton or Gosforth.

"We have had to downgrade our expectations a bit because of the lack of sites.

"It's a bit like Ikea and Tesco; Tesco went into convenience stores to enable it to grow, and Ikea has had to develop a much smaller format.

"We are having to do the same a little bit.

"But for us, it is the location that is the most important bit."

They are hoping to raise the profile of the family business even further and the couple's 22-year-old son is poised to come into the business in marketing after finishing a masters in business studies.

Despite bucking the retail trend of a spending slowdown to achieve record results this year, the Barratts say they want to increase their profile to compete with the likes of B&Q.

Mrs Barratt said: "We want to establish a brand which will attract not only customers but also make our recruiting easier."

And she added: "Garden retail isn't traditionally a sexy thing to work in, but some people are happy to work for a national chain because they have heard of it, although these companies are actually struggling more than us."