JUDGES at the annual Basingstoke business Awards made a top choice when they named a hairdresser as Young Business Person of the Year in 2000.

Just four years on, 26-year-old Clair Shell is about to open her own business, Studio Fifty-Five, in Basingstoke's Festival Place.

Miss Shell knows there are no short cuts to launching a business, and has been working since February to prepare for the opening of the new studio, next Wednesday.

She has decided now is the right time to set her business plans into action, after having been a manager for a salon in Basingstoke, promoted to a multi-manager and then to an area manager.

Since leaving her job as an employee, she has been running her own mobile hairdressing business to keep herself going while embarking on the hunt for premises, and taking a series of business and computer courses to make sure her own studio is successful.

Miss Shell, who lives in Brighton Hill, Basingstoke, moved to the town when she was four years old and went to school at the then Richard Aldworth - now Aldworth Science College - before training in beauty and hairdressing at Basingstoke College of Technology.

She has invested a massive £75,000 in setting up Studio Fifty-Five and brought Basingstoke-based R C Designs on board to carry out the design and fit-out.

Miss Shell has also invested in vibro-massage basins, to give her clients an extra touch of luxury, and will have six workstations for herself and her staff, including a trainee.

She said: "I've always been ambitious. I originally thought about my own studio just over a year ago, but I wasn't going to do it until next year. "However, I brought my plans forward because I was keen to get started and had been searching for premises since February."

Her future plans include introducing beauty and alternative therapy treatments, and she is starting Studio Fifty-Five - so-named because it matches the number on her personalised car registration - with a client base of 150 to 200 customers.

The new studio will operate seven days a week, opening between 9am and 8pm from Monday to Friday, and until 7pm on Saturday. Sunday hours will be from 11am to 5pm.

And Miss Shell is confident of success, as she said: "Basingstoke needs my studio with its concept of luxury combined with a friendly and relaxed atmosphere.

"I want my clients to have a great experience rather than a service - and at an affordable price."

Her business plan is to have a turnover of £120,000 to £140,000 at the end of the first year and to have hit £180,000 to £200,000 by the end of three years, when she expects to be employing up to eight stylists.

But Basingstoke is only the start for the young woman with a stylish head for business.

She said: "I'm aiming for a chain. In 10 years, I would like at least three studios in the Surrey and Hampshire border towns, and eventually I would like to go international.

"I've put my life on this. I'll make a success of it."

And there's something else she wants to prove - "I believe customer service can be improved in hairdressing. I think people deserve to be pampered and made to feel special."

Looking back to 2000, when she won the Young Business Person of the Year award, Miss Shell said: "I didn't expect to win, but it's given me the confidence to know that hairdressers can be business people."