Film offer follows as farmer's wired wife goes from bust to boom

By JULIA STUART

Sally Robinson is standing in a barn on her farm in Yorkshire, England, holding up a voluminous white lacy brassiere. At size 56G, a set of newly born twin lambs could easily fit into each cup.

"If you go into a shop and ask for something like this, the assistant is going to think you're having a joke with her," says Sally, 43, a farmer's wife.

Outside the barn, with its shelves teetering with boxes of lingerie, the air is ripe with the smell of manure. The pigsty has been converted into an office and two women are busy processing orders from Sally's website.

It is easy to see why a film company turned up at Valley View Farm waving a contract for her story. Sally launched the website - www.amplebosom.com - in November 1999, after years struggling to keep their 200-acre sheep and cattle farm afloat. Sally and husband John, 55, had already diversified into bed and breakfast and holiday cottages, but still it was a struggle.

"I'd been thinking about mail order for a long time," says Sally tucking into a thickly buttered bun at her kitchen table. "I thought about garden furniture and I thought about jewellery. Then a friend of mine was looking for a bra to get married in, she couldn't find one in the shops. We looked on the internet and it became apparent that there were a lot of bras, but they were for belly dancers - bras with feathers on them and holes - nothing bog standard. So I decided that was a good place to start."

She decided to concentrate on larger sizes as most lingerie shops have a limited size range, and secured an £80,000 ($NZ263,244) bank loan and a £7,500 rural business development grant from the European Union. Manufacturers agreed to supply her. The woman who made Sally's bed and breakfast brochures designed her catalogue and a local man built her website.

Sally soon found that women with smaller busts also struggle to find good-fitting bras. She now stocks 150 sizes, ranging from 30 to 56ins, and cup sizes A to M. The average size sold is 38DD. She sells 200 odd a week, and has customers in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and America. Sally has one full-time helper and a handful of part-timers.

The business has been in profit for the last three months, making more than the farm and holiday businesses combined.

John is not a man to chat, nor indeed one to show much emotion. "He did smile when I got the contract for the film," says Sally "There would have been a row though if I had pinched his garage for my bras."

- INDEPENDENT