'I LOVE carpets, me." The advertising slogan that made Frank's Factory Carpets a household name across the North-East trips easily off the tongue of Jason Maguire.

But to Jason - at 30 the youngest of the three brothers who established the business - it isn't so much a catchphrase as a way of life.

"It just rolled off the tongue - we wanted a no-fuss approach and it said what we were about. It is very much the way the family feels about the industry - it's in-built with us, if you put any two of us in a room then within ten minutes we will be talking about carpets and flooring," he said.

Jason's father, Billy Maguire, founded the business which would later evolve into the CreateCity empire. In the late 1970s, Billy moved from his native Yorkshire to Shildon, County Durham, initially selling carpets out the back of a van before setting up the successful B&G wholesale business with his friend, George Oswald. Fifteen years later, the business had five stores around the region.

His sons, Billy, Frank and Jason learned the trade at a tender age and, when Billy decided to sell his shares in the business to the parent company in 1993, his boys were already running the Stockton franchise, even though the eldest was just 27 and Jason was only 18.

"Dad made a brave decision which must have been very difficult for him at the time, but I think he's very proud and very pleased with the way it turned out," said Jason.

"At the time it didn't seem like a great responsibility - I had been involved in the business since I was 12 so I was 18 with six years' experience. It was something we talked about all the time, we would talk about floor coverings and installation around the kitchen table, so it was part of your life."

Within two years, the brothers had broken from the parent company after disagreements about the direction the business should take and in 1995 founded Frank's Factory Flooring - named after the middle brother who remains an integral part of the firm - and opened shops in Darlington, Hartlepool and Stockton.

Over the next two years, they opened branches in Sunderland and Bishop Auckland as their name - and the slogan - spread around the North-East, achieving growth of at least 20 per cent every year.

But by the late 1990s, the business was beginning to experience problems. Despite having grown into a major company, the way the business was being run had not changed.

Jason said: "The business was flourishing but it was chaotic. We had very little management experience - we had five stores and a staff of 70 people, containers full of pallets being delivered from all over the country and we didn't even have computer systems - the three of us were keeping all the information in our heads."

Enter David Stubbs - now finance director and the first non-family member on the board. He joined the firm in 2000 after 30 years in the trade.

David and the brothers launched into a reorganisation of the management structure and the logistics of what had become a major enterprise.

"We used to have directors staying at the warehouse until 10pm unloading vans and, while its good to be hands-on, they should have been using their skills and expertise in better ways," said David.

"We do things differently now. If a decision needs to be made, it gets made - there is no need to send it up the line for a decision in a week's time.

"We will make mistakes and it may cost us a few quid here and there, but we bounce back and we bounce back higher than we were before."

With the added focus brought by David, the business was restructured.

CreateCity, the parent company, now has a number of independently-run divisions employing more than 100 people: the original retail arm Frank's Factory Flooring; Maguires Carpets, the wholesale division run from a 90,000sq ft warehouse in the former Naafi building in Whessoe Road, Darlington, and Cloverdale, a wholesale operation with a range of 60 styles launched at the end of 2002.

There was also Frank's Contract Flooring, the commercial flooring section launched a year ago with an eye on the new office developments springing up across the North-East, and Planet Wood, the newest division, which is being launched with an initial £500,000 investment to develop the growing market for wood flooring.

Six months ago, CreateCity bought the George Reynolds Industrial Estate, in Shildon - the town where Billy Maguire started it all a generation ago.

Having outgrown its home in Whessoe Road, the business is moving its main operations to the estate, which will provide three times as much warehousing space by September and provide the eighth Frank's Factory Carpets shop - a move expected to create another 30 jobs during the next two years.

No decision has been made on what to do with the Darlington site, although Jason is keen to retain a presence in the town.

He said: "We are still looking at options for this site.

"We don't want to leave Darlington, we live here, it is where our children go to school, so we are considering whether to sell the site or whether to base either the wood division here or Cloverdale."

The firm is also keeping its options open about a possible move into manufacturing.

With a still buoyant housing market, the imminent move to bigger premises in Shildon and the success of the Cloverdale, contract and wood divisions, the firm is confidently predicting turnover will double in the next five years as it proves an independent can break the stranglehold of the carpet industry's big players.

Jason said: "Cloverdale in particular has been massive for us - it has been a revolution which has changed the direction of the business. The diversity of product has never been so good and it has had a massive bottom-line effect.

"The perception of our business among the big boys in the industry is as a business going forward, whereas before they saw us as a glorified market trader.

"I have never felt as excited and encouraged for a long time and I can't see any clouds at the moment - I just see opportunities."