FILE OF FACTS
Date of birth:
February 12, 1947.

Title:
Managing Director, ICW Modular Glazed Systems.

Education:
St Peter's Church of England School, Harrogate.

First job:
Administration, ICI Fibres.

Favourite Film:
The Horse Whisperer.

Favourite song:
Mozart's Elvira
("But I love Meatloaf.")

Favourite holiday destination:
Florida in February.

Last book read:
A Man Named Dave,
by David Pelzer.

Car driven:
BMW 323i.
("It's a mean machine
and my only luxury.")
 'Touchy-feely' business style wins through as widow-turned-inventor takes on the big boys


Margaret Wood's user-friendly window won her second place in the British Female Inventor of the Year awards. Jane Charnley found out why the device was such a breakthrough for her.

FOR 16 years of trouble and strife, a window company with a turnover of less than a quarter of a million may not amount to a great success story in some people's books.

But for 55-year-old widow Margaret Wood, who still gets asked if she's the secretary and/or a lesbian - her Wakefield-based operation is quite something.

And now, with the development of an ergonomic catch which makes it possible to open heavy windows with one small push, Mrs Wood has finally got an opening through which to take on the "big boys".

When her husband died from cancer in 1986 aged 47, she didn't know what to do. She had spent the last six years nursing Tony and bringing up three teenagers.

Having given up her work in administration in the engineering department of ICI Fibres many years ago, she was a perfectly moulded housewife - a "domestic engineer" as she now puts it.

Her husband's business making industrial panels in Leeds was in the hands of a business partner who found it particularly difficult to entertain the thought of a simple wife taking part in the running of the firm.

"His business partner didn't want me anywhere near the business. I didn't know what I was going to do but knew I would do something," says Wood.

"My main focus had been to support Tony, who had opened life up to me and encouraged me to have a go. He never said 'Don't do it'.

"It was appalling really and a bloody hard struggle. The attitude was 'Why would you want to do anything, why don't you want to find a husband?'

"But I wanted to be independent and have some choice. I had had a very good relationship with my husband and wasn't particularly ready to get re-married.

"But we were dealing with a different generation then, when the woman's place was in the home."

Within a few years, the business collapsed under the strain of the recession of the early 90s and closed down. But Wood remembered how before his illness, her husband had intended to pursue the niche market of customised windows and doors.

So, spurred on by the Wakefield branch of government support network Business Link, Wood bought the shell from the liquidators and took the plunge. "I knew I could do something with it - it was an opportunity to put my money where my mouth was," she says.

Since then, from its rented site on an industrial park near Horbury Junction, ICW Modular Glazed Systems has produced units for some high profile clients. As well as working for steel giants Corus and Avesta, the small firm of only six staff has provided all the windows for Kew Gardens' Millennium Seed Bank and for a mobile entertainment suite used by a Formula 1 Racing team. In fact, ICW's turnover had been creeping steadily towards the £500,000 mark until the foot-and-mouth crisis hit it indirectly via the catering industry and knocked it back to £240,000 this year.

But despite the barriers, both physical and mental, Wood had ambitions to take her business further. By this stage, she had put herself through a number of courses - ranging from how to use a keyboard to how to be a company director. "I remember thinking I wanted to be global - I wanted to think big. I recognised we needed a product to activate the market, something innovative."

For 18 months, Wood worked with her operations manager, Mike Broadhead - who has stuck with her since ICW was formed in 1993 - and the engineering department of Sheffield Hallam University to come up with a patentable product she says will improve the quality of life for people using buses and trains.

The Hopper window system, which she alternately calls her baby and her rising star, is already causing a stir. It is yet to be branded - there's a crate of beer on offer at the factory for staff who come up with a name - but has attracted the attention of a number of transport companies already. It has won a £9,500 Government Smart award and a further £10,000 funding to take it through to the production stage.

And of course, in February, it got Wood the title of second-best woman inventor in the country in a competition sponsored by the Small Business Service, the Patent Office and HSBC bank. With one of her characteristic bursts of shrill laughter, Wood describes how she competed against a line of inventors with their sophisticated presentations by just standing on the stage with her winner window. One of the judges apparently told her later: "On your written presentation you were an also-ran but on your personal presentation, it was a winner. We were very impressed."

The award led to a factory visit in March by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, who bestowed on Wood the status of role model. In short, the unnamed device got Margaret Wood a name for herself. She explains: "It is the recognition that counted. And it was useful, because people still think you are the secretary particularly in this industry and I was even asked recently if I was a lesbian." "Women can give men a run for their money but they have to give that extra 50 per cent."

Just as she is unafraid to dispel myths about equality for women in business at a time when feminism is almost a dirty word, Wood is just as unapologetic about her management style. Giving me a full tour of the small factory and introducing me individually to her "boys", she says: "I have been criticised for not being hard. "Perhaps I could be a lot wealthier but working with the people I have, I have gained a great deal of pleasure. "Those softer issues men see as weaknesses are in fact a strength. You can beat somebody up and make them do it, but I would rather they wanted to do it.

"I'm proud of my boys, proud of the team because they have responded to our crises. We are building a professional outfit here so we can compete with the big boys."

Wood is a board director at First, the Wakefield district regeneration agency as well as a judge on Shell-run technology programme STEP. She explains why this work is so important to her: "Horbury Junction may not be the centre of the universe but I want to get away from the perception that it is just a former coalfield. I am very interested in raising the profile of engineering and manufacturing. "I don't think we can compete with the Far East in terms of labour, but we have technical abilities and skills." And to the horror, no doubt, of a substantial core of business people, she expounds a thoroughly touchy-feely-girly theory about her business in West Yorkshire.

"It is about creating wealth and bringing it back into the community. If you take out, then you have to give back. "People say I'm unusual, but I have experienced a lot in my life. It is about getting people to believe in themselves. "I'm a grandmother now, which makes it all worthwhile. "I think we have a responsibility for what we handover to the younger generation."

Yorkshire Post
jane.charnley@ypn.co.uk