MOVERS AND SHAKERS 

Discover the stories behind two enthusiastic entrepreneurs who are creating major waves in the UK business world 

Retailers often declare that customers are their most important asset. But, while some sound as if they are paying Lip service to the idea, Sally Bailey, chief executive of White Stuff, is a true believer. Even the clothing retailer's website reflects her view, declaring: 'Lovely clothes for lovely people'. Ms Bailey says: 'The most important people are those who buy our product. This includes the buyers who select it, and the customers who buy it in our shops. Everything we do is about service to get the product into the customer's hands.' 

So when research revealed that customers disliked changing rooms that opened directly onto the shop floor, White Stuff amended its floor plans, introducing a false wall that screened off the changing area. 'It's not rocket science,' explains Ms Bailey. 'You Just need to listen to what the customer is saying. We are dedicated to pleasing them. We ask: "What is the best thing we could do?”' Hence, the introduction of one oversized fitting room in each of White Stuff's 54 stores to enable mothers to bring their buggies in while they change. 

'When a customer walks into a White Stuff shop, we want them to feel like they are at home,' says Ms Bailey. 'There are chairs to sit down on, water coolers, and staff will come along with colouring books to entertain children while the customer browses.' Even the background music is carefully considered. On Saturdays it has a faster tempo. On Sundays, when customers may prefer a quieter atmosphere, the tone is softer. 'The music is changed by the hour, according to the day,' says Ms Bailey. 

White Stuff has eschewed the shop design of a traditional fashion retailer, preferring to model its interiors on a Victorian house where Ms Bailey believes her customers aspire to live. Since her arrival, White Stuff has sought locations away from the beaten track and shopping centres are viewed as anathema. 'To be honest. we do have some stores that are very hard to find,' says Ms Bailey. 'In Exeter, for example, there's the High Street and the shopping centre, but you have to turn left down an alley to find White Stuff, right by an organic butcher and coffee shop.' 

Yet White Stuff's customers, whom Ms Bailey describes as 'extremely loyal', are not deterred by these intrepid expeditions. When she took over five years ago, White Stuff had 15 stores and an annual turnover of £14m. Today, turnover is in excess of £55m, with stores generating annual revenues between £500,000 and £2.5m from an average customer spend of £35. 

Matt Stockdale, managing director of HomePride, which this year will turn over more than £4m, has the mother of former Tesco buyer Fraser McDonald to thank for his success. Desperate to get the supermarket chain to stock his oven cleaning product, Oven Pride, Mr Stockdale bombarded the buyer with calls. 

But it was to no avail: 'The response was always "Thanks but no thanks",' he recalls. 'So I said, "Let me send some to your mother, your aunt, your grandmother..." and. I think to make me go away, he gave me his mother's address.' Two weeks later, Mr Stockdale was in the buyer's office signing a deal to supply his product to 30 stores. 'He told me that his mother wanted him to give me a chance but that he didn't give me much hope,' says Mr Stockdale. A year later he was supplying 130 Tesco stores. 'I didn't realise when I first approached Tesco that it was the 

UK's biggest supermarket chain,' says Mr Stockdale. 'I just knew that I shopped there.' 

The idea for the oven cleaner came in 1999 when, after being made redundant from his job as a sales manager for a telecoms business, Mr Stockdale decided to fulfil a lifelong ambition to run his own company. 'I looked at a catalogue business first because direct sales was what I knew,' he says. 'But I came across chemical companies making products, one of which was an oven cleaner. I was always the one lumbered with cleaning our oven, so I was intrigued.' He tested one product, a bottle of white fluid, which produced such great results that he started to research the oven cleaner marketplace. 'I found the hardest thing was to clean the racks,' says Mr Stockdale. 

He decided to create kits to make cleaning racks easy, sourcing packaging, disposable gloves and a bag, into which the racks could be placed with the cleaning fluid. 'I created 5,000 units and sent one each to Kleeneze, Betterware and QVC, and got nowhere; he recalls. Dejected, Mr Stockdale found another sales job but, 15 months later, a fax arrived with a purchase order from Kleeneze. 'I went to the garage and dusted down the stock,' he says. Kleeneze sold out within weeks, and placed more orders. Then QVC faxed across an order. 'I was suddenly on national television, but in eight weeks QVC had sold out,' he says. 'I didn't realise what I had; It took a letter from a satisfied customer, asking when the cleaner would be available in shops, to prompt Mr Stockdale to change his strategy and approach high street retailers. Enter Tesco. 

In its first year, HomePride turned over £90,000 but soon reached £1.1m. 'Going into retail changed everything for me,' says Mr Stockdale. 

Russia's boreal forests and wild grasses could combat climate change 

A Scientists believe Russia's ancient forests are the country's best natural weapon against climate change, even though the stockpile of carbon beneath the ground also makes these areas vulnerable to carbon release. A recent study found that half the world's carbon is stored within land in the permafrost region, about two-thirds of which lies in Russia. Overlying former glaciers, they are a coniferous mix called the boreal forest. 'There's a lot of carbon there and it's very vulnerable,' says Josep Canadell, co-author of the study. 'If the permafrost thaws, we could be releasing ten percent more carbon a year for several centuries more than our previous models predicted. It's going to cost a lot to reduce our emissions by that much —but it will cost more in damage if we don't' 

B The study was published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Researchers found that the region contains 1,672 billion tons of organic carbon, much of it several feet underground, that would account for approximately 50 percent of the estimated global below-ground organic carbon. Another paper published in Nature found that old forests, which make up perhaps half of the boreal forest, 'continue to accumulate carbon, contrary to the long-standing view that they are carbon-neutral'. Even though fires and insect infestations destroy entire swaths of forest and release into the atmosphere the carbon they contain, old-growth forests still take in more than these natural disturbances release, says lead author Sebastiaan Luyssaert, a biologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. 'This is all the more reason to protect Russia's boreal forests,' which take in 500 million tons of carbon a year, or about one-fifth of the carbon absorbed by the world's landmass, says Mr Canadell, who is executive director of the Global Carbon Project, based in Canberra. 

C Ling Ming Chen, a University of Toronto geography professor who specialises in climate modelling for the boreal region, says: 'Cutting boreal trees increases the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and it takes 50 to 100 years to put that carbon back in the ground.' Luysaaert and Chen argue there's a strong case for conserving the old-growth forests. 'It's better to keep as much carbon in the forest as possible right now,' Mr Luysaaert explains. 'If we want to avoid irreversible processes like melting permafrost or changing ocean currents. we absolutely have to control our emissions in the next two or three decades. It's a case where you need to be short-sighted to be far-sighted: 'The threats to the boreal forests don't seem significant right now,' explains Nigel Roulet, a carbon cycle specialist at McGill University in Montreal, 'but I'm convinced pressure will increase as the region gets warmer and it gets easier to operate there. Also, I expect these resources to become more valuable as others are exhausted' 

D Scientists say Russia and Kazakhstan could make a unique contribution to the fight against global warming by harvesting wild grasses that have overgrown 100.000 square miles of agricultural lands abandoned in the nineties, and using them to make ethanol — or, better yet, burn them in coal-fuelled power plants. According to Nicolas Vuichard. principal author of a paper published in Environmental Science and technology of Washington, SC, using the grasses to make ethanol would sequester in the ground, over 60 years, about 10 million tons of carbon a year — one-quarter as dead root matter in the sail and the rest in producing ethanol as a substitute for petroleum-based fuels. 'That's not huge on a world scale, but it's substantial,' he says. Fossil fuels emit about eight billion tons of carbon a year, of which about two billion tons are absorbed by plants and soil. 

E Renton Righelato, visiting research fellow at the University at Reading and former chairman of the World land Trust, agrees. 'Given that it would take the world's entire supply of arable land to replace just two-thirds of our transport fuel needs,' he says, 'biofuels are not a practicable long-term solution for transportation emissions. What we need is carbon-free fuel. But in the case of abandoned croplands, using grasses as biofuels could make a contribution,' he adds. Study co-author Adam Wolf, of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University, cites a study by Elliott Campbell in Science magazine that showed that burning grasses in a coal-fuelled plant doubles the savings in carbon emissions compared to using the same grasses to make ethanol. 'If biofuels are going to reduce emissions, using abandoned croplands to make electricity and offset coal use is our best bet,' he says. 'Both of these countries have coal-fuelled power plants, so the process could start soon.' Thus, Russia and Kazakhstan are now in a position to become leaders in green energy, and could use the grasses to export clean electricity in addition to oil and gas, according to Mr Wolf.