BUSINESS FIRST INNER 3-38:Layout 1 9/6/08 16:32 Page 28
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Profile
BUSINESS
UNIFORM
Sue Stedman had a highly successful career in the
fashion industry and was handsomely rewarded for
it. But her life only began to have meaning when
she chucked it all in to start her own business. With
its 20th anniversary approaching, it is a decision
she never regrets.
For someone who has all the obvious trappings of success – a
beautiful house near Guildford with one and a half acres of rolling
lawns and duck ponds – Sue Stedman sure does like to stand up for
the rights of the small business owner.
“I get very cross with things that are not fair in life,” she says, bristling.
“I had a client that ordered a large amount of staff uniforms from
me, even when they must have known they were going under,
probably just to make their staff give an impression of solidity even
as the whole thing was collapsing. I never got paid and I am really
mad at them.”
Sue turns her anger into polemical articles, having a go at
businesses who don’t play fair or a government that she accuses of
squeezing the lifeblood from the very sector that drives the British
economy, namely small business.
Don’t even get her started on CGT.
But I didn’t come down to Guildford to get Sue Stedman’s view on
what was wrong with the world. I wanted to speak to a woman who
by any measure is a highly successful entrepreneur, who epitomises
that type of business person driven by an urgent need to fulfil their
destiny and is prepared to risk all to do so, even when doing
nothing would have guaranteed a comfortable life.
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