A passion for shoes and the fact that I only take a size two-and-a-half has resulted in me running a world wide company.

 Following university, I found myself living in La Coruna, Spain and teaching with an American girl, Terry. Her husband, Tonecho, owned a string of shoe shops in La Coruna and because of my size he used to have the shoes of my choice specially made in the factories for me because no one stocks a size two-and-a-half.

 It was Shoe Heaven for me. I had inherited the addiction to shoes from my mother, the original Imelda, who was known for spending rainy afternoons wearing a different pair every half hour just for sheer pleasure! This is a pleasure not understood by the male of our species but who cares about that?

 Once back in England I was quite often stopped in the street by women wanting to know where I had bought such beautiful shoes, so it was inevitable that, with the help of my friends, I would venture into the footwear trade. It was like an Aladdin's Cave! I became UK agent for the Spanish shoe factories and built successful fashion brands. I began travelling all over the UK and Ireland and exhibiting at international trade fairs including Dusseldorf, Las Vegas, Madrid and Milan. I was at that time the only woman in the UK exhibiting at the British Footwear Fair. The shoe world was run by men and it took them quite a while to accept that a woman owned Rocca International Footwear.

 They had no choice, however, and, not feeling that I had anything to prove, I just got on with the job and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm sure they accepted me eventually! None of this helped to cure my addiction to shoes as by this time I was having shoes made in the sample rooms in the Spanish factories in every style and colour I wanted. What's a girl supposed to do? Storage became an acute problem and I really didn't know what was in those cardboard boxes. A friend suggested that we count my shoes and we stopped when we got to 300 pairs!

 I had shoes that I didn't even remember buying and I immediately thought that life would be a lot easier if I could see through the boxes - and at that moment The Clear Box Company was born. I had no idea how to make any kind of box, least of all a transparent one, but I set about finding out.

 A little thing like completely changing my life was not going to deter me. I had to find a suitable material, a manufacturer, set up distribution, decide how to get them to market etc., but one thing I was sure of...there were millions of women all over the world with the same chronic shoe storage problem that I had.

 Instinct told me that if I could get it all under way The Clear Box would be a success. After 18 months of investigation and hard work I finally had my transparent shoe box. I launched www.theclearbox.com on September 1, 2001. I had decided to make 10,000 ladies' shoe boxes to begin with. They were manufactured in the UK and the bulk of my manufacturing is still done here.

 You can't beat the control and good service you get with UK manufacturing. Bit by bit I added other products to the range, boot boxes, hat boxes etc and all of them to solve storage problems in a ladies' dressing room.

 We have boxes for every frippery you care to mention. The latest product is The Clear Bag - a superb transparent handbag organiser to keep your life in and just transfer from one bag to another.

 Advertising became a necessary evil but soon paid off as one small ad in British Vogue made The Clear Box Co a worldwide company. Despite the fact that Vogue is printed in many countries it is still British Vogue that people buy all over the world. I was soon getting enquiries from everywhere and my first official distributor abroad was New Zealand.

 Today we sell in 25 countries, so my gamble that there were plenty of women with the same shoe addiction and the inevitable storage problems seems to have paid off.

 Men continue to have no clue at all as to why women need so many shoes and women continue not to care if they understand or not. Women do not understand the word need when it comes to shoes. My mission is to solve the storage problem for all those beautiful things we buy. My Clear Boxes keep everything in pristine condition and easy to find at a glance. Women tend to be extremely practical and solve problems for the family and in the workplace every day.

 I'm sure there are lots of good ideas out there that would make life easier for us all. My advice is to go for it and see what happens. If you don't try you will never know.

 My products are now on sale all over the world which continues to amaze me on a daily basis. I run a family business with my two sons keeping the wheels turning. We operate with no compromise whatsoever on quality and good customer service. In 2008 we opened in 3 new countries and plans to expand and find new distributors are always on our agenda. The Clear Box was an idea born of necessity and very quickly became Clearly the Best Way to Store Everything.