A 27-YEAR-OLD businesswoman is celebrating the launch of her third business in two years. Nicki Stowell set up Fleurt Florist in Wood Street, Calne in August 2004.

The following year she took on the premises next-door and launched a women's clothing store, Number Five, and last month, the young entrepreneur launched Stowell's Bistro in Beach Terrace.

Miss Stowell puts her success down to having really good staff and not needing much sleep. She said: "My mum calls me Maggie Thatcher because I only need a few hours sleep a night.

"Once you've launched one business though, three isn't that much more difficult."

Miss Stowell set up the floristry business simply because she loved flowers and she is entirely self-taught, spending a lot of her free time reading books and websites on floristry.

She decided to specialise in exotic flowers so as to separate herself from the other florists in the area who were doing more traditional displays.

She said: "When I told another florist what I was planning to do he laughed me out of his shop.

"Two years later and I have the contract with the funeral home in town and do 80 per cent of their funeral business."

The opportunity to set up the clothes store came when the previous owners packed up and left in the middle of the night.

Miss Stowell decided to approach the landlord to take on the lease and found it easy to manage as it was next door to the floristry. She added: "It took a while to build up and we took a hit in the first six months, but now we are getting ready to move into larger premises."

Stowell's Bistro, the latest venture, was launched in September and Miss Stowell describes it as a gastro bar'.

She said: "I want people to be able to come here wearing anything and enjoy food that they recognise but that has a little twist or something different about it."

Typical fare on the menu is chicken stuffed with apple, apricot and raisins along with things like venison, monkfish and duck.

Three businesses would be enough for most people, but Miss Stowell is not happy to leave it there and has taken over another business in Devizes with her partner.

She added: "If you've got people you trust around you and working with you then it's ok - I think that's what gives me the energy to do it all."