Mick Seaby is a committed "optimist" who hates the limelight, yet manages Britain's Number One aquatics importing/retailing business.

He is admired by his peers and is former Chairman of Ornamental Fish International - the world forum for fishkeeping - and a former Director of OATA, the British ornamental fish trade organisation.

Mick started life as a self-employed bricklayer, was completely "hooked" as a fishkeeper and used his wide hands-on expertise of the subject - coupled with an extraordinary vision for business - to launch what is now Swallow Aquatics in 1976.

He borrowed £500 from his father, became part of a partnership which was only to last 10 months, and opened what he describes as "a tatty run-down garden centre" in Rayleigh.

With a wife and three children to support, Mick never had the slightest doubt that the project would somehow succeed.

The following year he employed 16-year-old Colin Pottle who now looks after the day-to-day running of Swallow Aquatics' four sites in Mick's absence.

To help cash flow - things were tight - he carried on as a full-time bricklayer, going to the Rayleigh site in the evenings and at weekends to run the company to "do various items of manual work relating to building and re-stocking ".

His wife Diane - his single co-director for over 20 years - looked after the business during the daytime with her young son Nick - now aged 29 and the company's Managing Director and company secretary - often sitting in his pushchair looking up at fish tanks in between playschool and starting infants school, aged five.

They were tough times for Diane. It was freezing cold in the Fish House and conditions were strictly harsh compared to the state-of-the-art modern facilities. She also had three children to look after and a home to run. It took courage and conviction to 'run' with Mick's vision for their future - which many less enlightened and supportive wives would see as a huge gamble - and cope with the day-to-day running of the business.

"Nick's seen more fish than any other children around," says proud dad Mick, "and this knowledge obtained from being an 18-month-old toddler to the present day gives him a second-to-none grasp of the business."

Virtually from day one of trading customers asked about fish, so in the autumn of 1976 Swallow Aquatics started selling tropical fish. The following spring coldwater fish were offered for sale and the company was officially an aquatics and garden centre.

Over time the aquatics business grew to a point where the company rented half the site off for a garden centre and concentrated on aquatics. In the Spring of 1981 Mick gave up bricklaying and joined the company on a full-time basis. Swallow Aquatics had started down the road to its modern-day success.

Mick and Diane purchased the freehold for the site in 1985, but the battle for success was hard fought. Timber buildings which had been specially constructed rotted and in 1996 Mick sought professional help on how to get planning permission for a purpose-built brick premises. Once the go-ahead had been given, work started and the modern Rayleigh site was completed in the autumn of 1999.

In 1993 Swallow Aquatics purchased the freehold for the East Harling site, which was turned into an aquatics centre. Initially the garden centre was franchised out, but in October, 1999 it was decided to run the garden centre operation as part of Swallow Aquatics. The weather has, thus far, not been kind to this new initiative but "never mind it's another day tomorrow" says optimist Mick.

Swallow Aquatics moved into Gravesend in 1995 when Mick rented an area of Millbrook Garden Centre for an aquatics centre and this turned into another business success story.

Six months later the company moved to Colchester on a site next to Country Gardens. Swallow Aquatics - at least for the time being - was complete...

... Swallow Aquatics - to the present day ...

Swallow Aquatics Chairman Mick Seaby sums up his present day thoughts on the company as:

Rayleigh - things are going very well and it's good to see what he first regarded as "a tatty run-down garden centre" operating as a highly successful business.
Gravesend - another success story turned around in five years' flat.
East Harling - pleased with the way things are going, but with all the enormous potential he would like to modernise and improve the facilities - including the provision of a fully-operational laboratory.
Colchester - created a great deal of potential in a short space of time, but the site requires "polishing up".