Husband and wife team cook up a winning business recipe

THE career aspirations of most 15-year-old girls might stretch to being an actress, pop star or athlete.

Perhaps it was the influence of growing up in what was then a thriving manufacturing area, but Valda Goodfellow's biggest ambition was to run a factory.

She said: "I think it's because I'm naturally bossy, and the idea of running something and being in charge was really appealing.

"Because at that time, County Durham was a big manufacturing area and there were just factories everywhere, I thought that if I wanted to run something, it had to be a factory. The idea of producing things was tremendous to me."

Mrs Goodfellow has had a successful career already. She was managing director of Mr Lazenby's sausage factory in Teesside for four years.

Now admitting she is a "professional managing director - it's what I do" - she has taken on the challenge of her husband's business, Continental Chef Supplies (CCS).

Although CCS isn't a manufacturing company - it buys products from across the world and supplies to commercial kitchens across the UK - Mrs Goodfellow is realising her ambitions of success.

The company's client list reads like a who's who of the hospitality sector - the Ritz, Claridges, the Dorchester, the Houses of Parliament, Harrods and Fortnum and Mason.

Former chef Paul Goodfellow started the business in 1987 after seeing a gap in the market, and started selling catering equipment to chefs.

The business stayed in its niche - until Mrs Goodfellow joined the team in 2001 to plan a strategy for the company.

"We did work together before that, but really CCS was a traditional, family-run concern. It had huge potential to grow, but it never really branched out.

"Paul asked me to come in and plan a strategy for the business. We haven't looked back since then."

Mrs Goodfellow's track record has been impressive.

Within just five months of working at Thornaby-based gourmet sausage factory, Mr Lazenby's, she led the company back into profits and increased its profile in the industry, becoming known as The Sausage Lady when she took over as managing director - the only female managing director of a meat company at the time.

"At Lazenby's we dealt with the supermarkets, which are notoriously difficult to deal with," she said.

"We only had a turnover of about £10m and so in dealing with supermarkets we were really a tiny company.

"When we decided to sell out, we tried really hard to go with a company where we felt the jobs were safe.

"We went with Cranswick because we felt there was a commitment there to jobs on Teesside - but obviously there wasn't, because it closed at the back end of last year.

"I left not long after we were taken over because we had been such a small board of directors, with the power to move the company forward, but once we were swallowed up by a plc it was only part of the picture.

"We lost control of what we were doing and I found that really difficult to accept."

Now, with a staff of 20 and as joint managing director with her husband, Mrs Goodfellow is almost autonomous.

She concentrates on the strategy and operational side, leaving her husband to concentrate on his strength - sales - where he has extensive contacts made during his time as a chef in London.

A focused marketing strategy has seen the business increase in four years, breaking all the company's financial targets.

This has been done partly by producing a glossy brochure of high-specification tableware, illustrated with food by Terry Laybourne and chefs from the Ritz and Lansborough Hotels, in London, and also by extending product ranges so the company now sells 4,500 products.

Its catalogue goes out to every four or five-star hotel, restaurant, contract and airline caterers in the country.

"I don't believe in just sending a salesman out who doesn't know what he's talking about, doing the hard sell," said Mrs Goodfellow.

"Paul trains anyone who works here about the different products, and he knows exactly what chefs are looking for because he used to be one."

In just four years, the company's turnover has doubled to £2.6m, and Mrs Goodfellow estimates that it will rise to more than £5m within the next three years.

Despite most of the company's sales being in the south, the business is staying in the North-East even though there are plans to move to a warehouse.

If turnover rises by 40 per cent the company will need to move.

There's even been an increase in the numbers of amateur cooks buying professional egg whisks and other kitchen implements from the CCS website.

"There are a lot of people who have been inspired by the likes of Gordon Ramsey and TV programmes like that, who want to buy the products that the chefs use," says Mrs Goodfellow. "If we move premises we may have a showroom where people can come and have a look at our products."

But she said direct retail was not a direction the company would be taking.

The plans are to keep ahead of the market by shopping around for novel products at trade fairs, and to increase staff numbers and turnover.

"Our plan is to very much go for growth," said Mrs Goodfellow.

CCS has recently started supplying hotels in the Caribbean and Dubai, and even Bhs entrepreneur Philip Green's yacht in the south of France.

With a Wembley contract in the pipeline - CCS' largest to date - Mrs Goodfellow isn't regretting the move from manufacturing - although she says she misses it.

She says: "Every now and again I have to be where production is. My heart is in manufacturing and I used to be chair of Manufacturing Challenge.

"We tried to keep the interests of manufacturing alive in the North-East, but it was so sad to see the terminal decline of the sector. I think it is bad for the country. In the long term, we will be held to ransom by China.

"Once it has got its stranglehold on raw materials, it will force its prices up. But maybe that is the time it will come full circle.