HAVING won the New Business Of The Year title with her Jollydays Luxury Camping last year, this time around Carolyn Van Outersterp is pitching (pardon the pun) for two different categories in The Press Business Awards 2010.

As co-founder with her husband, Christian, of this ultimate community of luxury tents, based at Village Farm, Scrayingham, she is targeting both the Women In Enterprise category and the Business Personality Of The Year.

Her business credentials are impeccable. Having co-founded Elgin and Hall traditional style fireplace manufacturers in 1989, she built the brand into one of the most highly-respected in the industry before negotiating its sale in 2000 to the Aga Group for more than £4 million.

Then, with Christian, she launched CVO Fire, a contemporary fireplace business which the Sunday Times described as “the Prada or Armani of the fireplace industry”, and together they set up CVO Firevault, an awardwinning central London retail showroom.

But after the birth of her fourth child, Carolyn took time out to enjoy her young family and as part of that began to plan Jollydays.

Thus was coined the word “glamping” – or glamorous camping holidays inside a posh tent, some measuring six metres by nine metres and with solid wooden floors and featuring large wood-burning stoves, showers with hot running water, flushing toilets and a vintage rolltop baths. The separate bedrooms also included four-poster beds.

Evident is the dream that Carolyn had of becoming a designer when she was brought up in a Durham pit village. As an adult she put herself through art college and gained a place on a fashion course at Leicester Polytechnic, where she won two design competitions.

Having raised finance at the height of the credit crisis, Jollydays opened to rave reviews in the national press and on television. Break even was predicted for the first year, but the project managed to turn over £118,000, yielding a profit of more than £20,000.

Now the business is on course to turn over almost £250,000 in its second year, with 45 per cent or more as net profit.