Cricket is almost over for another season and something of a washout this summer for entrepreneur John Lawrence who opens the batting for the Gloucestershire village clubs of Stanway on Saturday and Dumbleton on Sunday.

John Lawrence will be celebrating his 65th birthday before long but it does not signify retirement from either cricket or from Brynteg Books, a business he has grown organically over three decades to become the largest independent textbook supplier to secondary schools in the United Kingdom.

“My cricket season was disappointing in terms of runs scored and also because of the cancellation of so many matches due to the weather, but I’m the eternal optimist and there’s always next year,” he says.

There’s good reason too for optimism at Brynteg Books, which is based at Winchcombe in the Cotswolds.

It is currently trading 15 per cent higher than in 2007 and in the New Year will launch a state-of-the-art website designed to drive the business to even higher levels.

“We estimate the secondary school text book market is worth £100 million and the school library market £50 million – our aim is to capture 20 per cent of that over the next few years,” he says.

Last year Brynteg Books turned over £6.5 million and a second company in the group achieved £2.7 million.

Accountants and business advisers Horwath Clark Whitehill of Cheltenham are about to begin the annual two-month audit of the business and it should read as a test case of triumph over adversity.

The business moved to Winchcombe in 1994 and upgraded to larger premises in 1997 to the town’s industrial park on the banks of the River Isbourne, a tributary of the Avon.

There were two warehouses for the tens of thousands of books and attractive office accommodation for the 25 staff, which grows to 50 for three months in the summer as the company gears up for the start of the academic year.

Business flourished for several years but disaster struck over two nights in June and July of 2007 when flash floods turned the Isbourne into a raging torrent.

The industrial park found itself under four and a half feet of water for several hours on the second occasion.

“We lost stock worth £36,000 in the first flood in June and £410,000 in the second in July.

“The business was absolutely devastated – virtually our entire stock was gone – and we had to bring in a bulldozer to scrape up the mushy and pulped remains of thousands of text books.

“I could not have blamed the staff if they had just held up their hands and accepted this disaster as fate and the end of the business – in fact they rose to the occasion and were magnificent despite what they’d taken on the chin.

“Fortunately our computer records and office were intact because they were on the mezzanine floor and backed up off-site, so we could start putting things back together immediately.

“The team did incredible hours and all the orders from our clients were fulfilled with replacement stock on time. Throughout all of this they were ably led from the front by their manager Richard Simpson.

“Meanwhile, our insurers gave us all the support we required.

“We were back in business and consolidating our position within weeks of the July floods helped by the offer of an upgraded chicken shed in Winchcombe with 8,000 square feet of storage space – which we were also able to use for our production work.

“We rapidly found more space on the mezzanine floor – a second has since been added in the other building – so the team never had to stop work.

“This has reduced the risk of severe damage to the business from flooding in the future to virtually zero and we are happy to remain where we are.”

Emma Watkins, audit and business services manager for Horwath Clark Whitehill at Cheltenham, knows John Lawrence and Brynteg Books well.

“We were highly impressed at the efficiency and dedication of the staff, the leadership of John Lawrence and way in which they all coped with the disaster which could have destroyed their business,” she said.

“The sector is highly competitive with wholesalers, publishers’ direct sales and other specialist school text book suppliers all competing for a share of the lucrative market.

“The floods could easily have pushed them under in such a competitive market but they refused to give up.

“Brynteg Books is a prime case study for success under entrepreneurial management and we expect to see further growth of both the main firm and its associated companies in the coming years.

“We began our professional relationship when Brynteg Books was a much smaller company looked after by our Small Business Centre.

“Then came its period of substantial growth and this current audit will be its second with Horwath Clark Whitehill with the Cheltenham team.”

Entrepreneurship came later in life to John Lawrence than to many successful businessmen.

In the 1980s he was an Information Communications Technology lecturer at Gloucestershire College of Arts and Technology, but nurtured a persistent ambition to become a successful businessman.

“I noticed many students at the start of each academic year were unable to obtain vital textbooks needed for their course, which put them at a major disadvantage.

“The college did not seem able to help and I realised there was a business opportunity in setting up temporary campus bookshops to assist students in getting what they needed.

“We launched this in 1986 at de Havilland College in Welwyn Garden City and did excellent business through September and October.

“The early years were directed to establishing temporary bookshops on campuses and at one stage we had five open simultaneously at various colleges.”

Gradually John Lawrence – with the help of his wife Glennys, also a former teacher, and the dynamism of his small management team – grew the business from a small player into a much larger one.

They began to concentrate the company’s operations into the secondary and primary school library and text book market

“We have reached our current status by maintaining a dedication to making book buying easy and always offering outstanding value for money.

“Clients can order any book from any publisher in print in the United Kingdom or United States and most have top discounts. That includes fiction and non-fiction, text and library books with free delivery to UK destinations, on any size order.”

John Lawrence has now brought his son David into the business as managing director.

Together they have established subsidiary companies, including Turner Books, within the EJB Group and opened an office in Lancashire.

“I am enormously ambitious for the company but have started to limit my working time to around 30 hours a week so that Glennys and I can achieve the right kind of life balance at our home in Teddington.

“We enjoy our holidays together and find time for walking in the Cotswolds.

“David and I are in total agreement about where we want the group to go, but two generations obviously have a slightly different business philosophy.

“We look upon this as a strength and definitely complementary.”