Thankfully this doesn't mean you have to don a special helmet whenever you want to grab a beer from the fridge. Rather, as Guy Weaver, managing director of Premium Appliance Brands, explains, it involves designing and marketing goods in the UK which are then built using spare capacity at factories in Europe, Turkey and the Far East.

The model seems to be working. Cited in our Fast 100 under its holding company, Cranage Consultancy Services, the business increased its revenues from £3.4 million in the year ended December 2003 to £11.6 million in 2005. Reported turnover for 2006 is expected to be around £20 million. Pre-tax profit actually fell from £321,000 in 2003 to £143,000 in 2005. However, the company expects to declare a profit of £500,000 for 2006. Weaver blames the 2005 dip in profitability on a variety of capital investments.

"Our infrastructure was unable to cope with the pace of growth," he says. So the company replaced its creaking computer system and took on a warehouse in Bolton to enable it to carry buffer stock and service smaller customers who could not take delivery of an entire containerload of cooker hoods. It also rented a second floor at its Warrington HQ to accommodate its growing office staff. The origins of PAB lie in Stoves, the Prescot-based appliance company bought by Glen Dimplex in 2002. Weaver joined the business as marketing manager following its 1989 BIMBO out of the cookers division of Yale & Valor, led by ad man turned venture capitalist Sean O'Connor and former Thorn chief executive John Crathorne.

Weaver, who had worked in marketing for the likes of British Gas, Thorn EMI and Currys since graduating from Southampton University, was quickly promoted to the board as sales and marketing director, where he oversaw two sales directors. One of these was Parker Pens' former area director for Europe and the Middle East, Peter Brazier – who was later to join Weaver in the launch of PAB, again with the title "sales director".

During the 1990s Stoves went from being a £17 million-turnover operation losing £4 million a year to a £100 million operation making a profit of £5 million. Then it bought the student landlord's white goods stalwart, Warrington-based New World, at about the same time as robust Far Eastern and Turkish brands like Beko were flooding into the lower end of the market. This did not work out well and, in 2002, Stoves was bought by appliances giant Glen Dimplex, which flogged off the New World factory to a housing developer and asked Weaver to carry on as marketing director of its cooking division.

"But I missed the buzz," he explains. "I had an enormous amount of freedom in the position at Stoves: freedom to get things right and to get things wrong." So he said his farewells and set up on his own as a consultant based out of his home in Cranage, Cheshire. This developed into PAB thanks to one of his clients, Buckinghamshire-based kitchen/bathroom distributor Waterline, which sold branded appliances but was unable to compete with the internet on price.

"Customers' perception was that they could buy the appliances cheaper elsewhere so they were probably being ripped off on the furniture too," Weaver says. During his time at Stoves, he had done some work on sourcing products that made him think, "Why do we need a factory when there is excess capacity in the manufacturing marketplace?"

"So I suggested that they needed a range of products designed to complement their furniture ranges that was exclusive to them, so customers couldn't get them anywhere else." Impressed, Waterline boss Michael Lawrence asked Weaver to join his organisation. "I said, 'I've had enough of working for other people, but I'll do it for you.' And so we set up the trading company Premium Appliance Brands." "We" in 2003 consisted of Weaver and his old Stoves colleague Peter Brazier, who was also chafing under the corporate yoke. "It became apparent I wouldn't have the same freedom," Brazier tells EN. "It was all forms and meetings. That's not a criticism of Glen Dimplex, because a business of that size has to operate in that way, but after a year or so it was obvious that it wasn't for me.

"In the past I'd done well but always had the support of strong organisations. There comes a time when you realise you can only really test yourself if you go out on your own." So the pair remortgaged their houses to pay for an initial shipment, commissioned Bigblue (whose managing director Chris Parker knew the pair of old, having spent some time at Stoves as a freelance designer) to come up with the "Cuisina" range, and grew things from there, developing further brands for Allied Manufacturing's Kingswood Kitchens range and for Scottish distributor Leaker Direct. It then moved into supplying retailers – providing an own-brand range of cooker hoods for B&Q that has allowed the DIY giant to reduce dramatically the number of different products it stocks. "Even brandaware customers will buy an unbranded cooker hood," Brazier explains.

The next stage of the company's development into mainstream retail came from the acquisition in December 2004 of the struggling appliances division of the Bolton-based Bernstein Group from "company doctor" Bill Gleave. The remainder of the Bernstein Group has since, sadly, proved a turnaround too far for Gleave and was, at the time of going to print, in negotiations with corporate recovery specialist Endless to rescue it out of administration.

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