PICK up a Sunday newspaper or weekly television guide and you will often be astounded at what falls out of their glossy confines.

Usually, it's a mix of gadget catalogues, selling everything from cat and dog garden scarers to limescale removers and mousetraps.

Sometimes you flick through them, wondering who could possibly have a use for tiny radios, cordless headphones, dummy security cameras and sonic molechasers.

What is perhaps even more astonishing is who dreams up the ideas in the first place.

In some cases, you need look no further than Lingfield Way, on the Yarm Road Industrial Estate in Darlington, home to Tensor Marketing, and its founder and managing director, Bob Pickersgill.

He was training to be an industrial chemist at ICI on Teesside, when he gave up chemistry to establish Tensor Marketing in 1974, initially employing a handful of staff.

At the time he was also the drummer in Darlington band White Rabbit, and claimed his moment of fame when it was one of the support acts for legendary rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix's appearance at The Imperial in February 1967.

However, he has not looked back on what could have been, and instead looks forward to a bright future for Tensor.

By next spring, the company will have expanded its workforce by 15, to employ almost 60 people, and have an annual turnover of £5m.

It will also be operating from a 30,000sq ft site, following the completion of an extension, adding a second storey to its office building.

That extension follows the addition of 10,000sqft of space to its warehouse facilities earlier this year.

The expansion came despite the decision by Grand Universal Stores (GUS) to pull its own Innovations catalogue, to which Tensor supplied some of its products.

Mr Pickersgill said: "The Innovations catalogue was possibly our biggest customer 15 years ago, but now we have so many other clients for our products, that its closure will not really impact on our business.

"We now have our own catalogue, The Factory Shop, and supply goods to another GUS venture, high street store Argos.

"We produce about four million copies of our Factory Shop catalogue, across four print runs in a year."

He added: "About 80 per cent of our business involves selling to other trade catalogues, such as Ideal Homes and Marshall Ward, while we do about 20 per cent selling direct to the public from our factory shop."

The inspiration for many of Tensor's products come from Mr Pickersgill's travels around the world, looking for ideas his company can develop.

It often involves improving existing ideas that have originated in countries such as the US, making bigger or better versions of them.

"It never ceases to amaze me what actually sells, and where there is a market for our products. We are learning all the time."

He added: "There's always a better mousetrap. At Tensor we take ideas that we can develop, or improve for use in the UK and European market.

"We sell products around the world, but our biggest markets outside the UK, are Germany, Portugal, Spain and Japan.

"We are currently working to develop markets in former Eastern European countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia."

Most of Tensor's products are made outside the UK, with China, Singapore and Taiwan, being the biggest suppliers.

However, companies such as Vortex in Stokesley, North Yorkshire, produces some of the chemical-based products for the business.

Mr Pickersgill admits to the business being hit by the present problems with the Sars virus, which has put China and other far eastern countries of limits to companies in the North-East.

"That will have an effect on our business, as we will not be able to travel to trade fairs in those countries," said Mr Pickersgill.

He added: "We go to such shows every year, to develop partnerships with companies and look at ideas that can be developed into new products.

"However, we remain in a strong position. Our expansion, to be completed in the spring of next year, will further boost the business."