Woman: Today in our series on setting up your own business, I’m talking to Paul Jefferson, who gave up his job as a college lecturer in business studies to start an import business. Paul, what made you do it?

Man: Importing, because whenever I go abroad I see things I’m sure would sell here. And working alone, because I wanted to be very hands-on, and do everything from finding suppliers to selling.

Woman: Did you set yourself a financial target?

Man: Well, nothing specific. In the long term, it’d be great to have plenty of money: I can just see myself with a big house and a yacht. To be honest I think I might have quite a wait, though. In the meantime, I owe a bit of money, but it’s at a level I can live with, so I suppose I’ll be happy when I’m earning enough to pay the bills, with a little bit over to be able to eat out from time to time, and something to plough back into the business.

Woman: And are you making enough to live on yet?

Man: No, in a word. But I’m lucky, I’ve got an investor, Sarah Hall. She backs me with enough to live on each month in return for a share of my future profits. She’s actually a successful importer herself, in a different sector, and she’s given me a lot of useful advice on selling. Though I’ve mostly done things my own way. But making a profit is incredibly difficult.

Woman: Is that because of competition?

Man: I’m not quite sure what the competition is, really. Actually I have to admit I’m hopeless at driving a hard bargain, and I know some of my suppliers are taking advantage of that. So I have to pay a lot, which makes it difficult to sell to customers at a profit.

Woman: Are margins the only problem?

Man: Well not the only one. You see, at first I tried selling lots of different products to a variety of small shops, toyshops, jewellers, and so on. But I got very few actual sales. So then I considered supermarkets. I managed to see a product development manager, who seemed interested in my range of specialist food products. But then I heard from the company that they weren’t going to order anything - a new buyer had been appointed - and if I contacted them again in due course, they’d reconsider.

Woman: What happened next?

Man: Out of the blue, a restaurant chain placed a large order for food products. There was some difficulty about the price, but that was settled.

Woman: It sounds like a turning point.

Man: Unfortunately it wasn’t. The first consignment arrived from my supplier, I called the restaurant chain to fix delivery dates, only to be told they’d stopped trading. That was quite a blow.

Woman: I can imagine.

Man: Then I persuaded the food buyer of a major department store to meet me. When I looked around their food hall I could see they were already selling everything I hoped to supply them with, and my heart sank. But then the buyer said that they felt they were over- dependent on their existing supplier, and had decided to do something about it. So that’s where I came in.

Woman: It seems your original strategy, of offering everything from toys to jewellery, didn’t produce the volume of sales, or profit, you needed.

Man: I’d imagined that by selling lots of different lines I’d get a good spread of customers, but it didn’t really work out like that. Now I’m increasing my turnover by concentrating on just a few lines that I can sell to customers in the same sector. And with food, there are plenty of retailers out there, of all sizes, just waiting for me to come and sell to them, so I’ve dropped everything else.

Woman: How do you see the next twelve months?

Man: I’d like to say I’ll be hiring someone to handle existing customers, while I concentrate on drumming up new business, and that I want to move into export as well as import. To be realistic, that’ll have to wait until I’ve built up my customer base and turnover quite significantly.

Woman: Paul, how do you feel about your first year?

Man: It’s been great. I wish I’d started years ago!