“I’m very happy as long as I’m working in manufacturing and it doesn’t really matter what I’m making,” says the 40 year old. But I didn’t know that until I came here.

“I used to work in the garment industry, looking after design and sales.

“After arriving here I realised that what I loved was making stuff rather than the fashion. It was a pleasant revelation.”

Optical Filters manufactures specialist glass for a range of uses, for example screens which can be read in direct sunlight by fighter pilots, and tough displays used in cash machines. Bullet-proof glass ‘is not specialist enough’.

The firm was started in Wycombe in 1988 by Michael Dent, Mrs Dent’s father.

At the time, she was studying textiles with marketing and French at Huddersfield University, and remembers the sacrifices her parents had to make during the early years.

“It was a huge leap of faith and change in lifestyle for them. They had to fund the business by moving house and they had banger cars for many years because they preferred to buy pieces of machinery,” she said.

But that sacrifice paid off, as Optical Filters has grown into a multi-million pound, international company, based at Thame Park Business Centre since 1992.

Mrs Dent, who lives near Brackley, first started working there in 2001, in a part-time marketing role. She was offered the top job by Michael in 2003, but had reservations about saying yes.

“I said I wanted to be part of a growing business and I asked him why he hadn’t grown it any further than it was. I didn’t want to just sit there, I thought that would not be very interesting. He answered that it was because he had never had anyone to grow the business with before, and I said in that case why don’t we do it.”

The next year, Optical Filters set up a new factory in Pennsylvania.

“We had quite a lot of business in America anyway and it just made sense to go and expand there and be more local to them. We started right from the beginning, we literally went out and bought a factory with four walls and an air conditioning system, then bought the equipment to put in it and then trained the people.

“It has been very successful, but if we had known then what was involved, particularly the bureaucracy, we might have thought twice,’ said Mrs Dent, who has overseen a 200 per cent increase in turnover since she took over.

She now shares her time equally between England and America, where Michael, 66, and Mrs Dent’s mother, Clare, 68, now live.

Michael is still very much involved in the company as Group Technical Director - which raises the question, what happens if there is a disagreement about the direction the business takes?

“It’s hard, and that’s the difficulty of being in a family business,” she replies. “Having listened to all the views, occasionally the decision does come down to one person and I have to decide, and I would not be doing my job if I didn’t.

“I would be lacking integrity not to be honest to the business. But it is very rare, we do tend 99 per cent of the time to come to an agreement on what we are going to do.”

As for the future, Mrs Dent said the plan was to ‘weather’ 2009, while at the same time continue to invest in the research and development which is so vital in her line of work.

Over the next five years research and development is ‘absolutely key’ says Mrs Dent. “It is that focus which has enabled us to become a leading global player in what we do.


Words by Adam King, Business editor - Buisness Herald