At the age of 18 she started an online furniture company, 1st-for-furniture.co.uk, which, in only its second year of trading, is expected to hit a turnover of almost £400,000.

“I bought a table and chairs set,” she recalls, “and reasoned that if I could sell it, then I could afford to buy two sets, and so on.” With the banks unwilling to lend to anyone of such tender years, this was the only way that Ms Green was going to be able to fund her business and it proved to be an outstandingly successful strategy.

Within three months she was able to furnish a Hertfordshire showroom and her first year’s trading yielded a turnover of around £95,000. “I thought that was quite good for a one-person business in the middle of nowhere,” she proudly announces.

Costs were kept low with Ms Green doing her own bookkeeping (she had studied accounting at college) and turning her hand to painting and electrics when a friend’s father offered the use of a converted barn on his farm.

She even built a basic website, without suspecting how it might transform her business. “I had no concept of its reach. It was just supposed to advertise our presence to the local market,” she says, “but I got a call from a customer in Scotland asking if we could arrange delivery.”

Once she had found a suitable transport company, it seemed an obvious step to look beyond her previous boundaries.

She decided to invest more time and money in the website, employing a professional web designer, and in May 2005 her e-business went live. Now some 40pc of her annual £400,000 turnover comes directly from online sales. Another 20pc originate online, with buyers visiting the showroom to complete their purchases. She has had the website designed so she can update it to accommodate her constantly changing offering.

The few suppliers that she had got to know in her previous job were quickly supplemented by new contacts made at trade shows and she now sources goods from more than 60 different companies, both in the UK and abroad.

Right from the start her parents were very supportive, and although they couldn’t help her financially – and she is adamant that she would not have wanted them to – her father helped with deliveries in the early days.

Today she no longer needs her father’s help. She has three employees and her own fleet of vans (two owned and one rented) to make deliveries within a 100-mile radius, and she even augments her income by offering a delivery service to other local businesses. Her showroom is open six days week, as well as by appointment on Sundays and in the evenings. Her bank has done an about-turn and, seeing a good trading record, is happy to make an overdraft facility available. “That does help take the pressure off,” she admits.

This year (2008) she was named National Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the British Small Business Champions ceremony.

Ms Green has become something of an evangelist for entrepreneurship, visiting her local university to talk to students about its attractions, but does she think being young and female was ever a disadvantage in running her own business?

“Other people – family members and people in the trade – thought it would be. They thought I wouldn’t last three months. But I’ve proved them wrong, haven’t I?”

Images: BBC News