Sarah Rhodes knows how to get ahead in business -- she started selling hats. PAULINE HAWKINS meets the farmer's wife who is brimful of ideas

THE winding lane to Sarah Rhodes' home in Great Harwood is lined with trees covered in leaves and blossom -- a sure sign that the wedding season is in full swing.

From her home at the end of the narrow lane, Sarah runs a business many women would envy. From her vast selection of millinery masterpieces she will carefully help a client select a special hat for a very special occasion: a wedding, maybe, or a day at the races.

As every woman who has ever been faced with the task of finding the perfect hat will know, it isn't a five-minute job. Choosing in a department store can be difficult as the artificial light often distorts colours, it is not practical to take the hat to natural daylight, and the world and his wife are able to pass comment on the headgear of your choice.

But a visit to Sarah's home will be a far more pleasant experience. An array of amazing creations wait to be tried on in her small showroom, which she hopes to transfer to a barn conversion next spring.

Luckily for Sarah she gave birth to two sons -- Simon, 14, and 11-year-old Richard -- who have no interest at all in their mother's work. Daughters, particularly of primary school age, would have loved shuffling around in mum's shoes trying out creations covered in ribbons, net and feathered trimmings.

As it is, the boys are at school and husband Peter is out somewhere, looking after the beef cattle on the family farm. This gives Sarah, 42, time to devote her energies to the job in hand -- matching hat to outfit to make her customers feel confident, relaxed and happy when they arrive at their big day out.

She stumbled across her career almost by accident in the mid-1990s when she was looking to return to work but wanted something to fit around the farm, her family and her horses.

"I read an article in a farming newspaper about a lady called Beryl Otley, of York, who had started Get Ahead Hats about five years previously because she couldn't find a hat for her daughter's wedding. She said every hat she tried on felt like a mobile mushroom," Sarah said.

"When her daughter left home she started running the business from her daughter's bedroom."

Beryl's business began to take off and she started looking for other women across the country to take on franchises. Farmers' wives were an ideal choice because of the need for diversification and Sarah's was the first franchise to open in April 1995.

In 1998, the BBC Countryfile programme hosted by John Craven featured the business -- and the floodgates opened. More and more franchises were born and now there are more than a dozen branches from Dumfries to Devon.

As Beryl is now 60, discussions took place about what would happen when she retired and Sarah, who went into partnership with her, now runs the whole franchise business, buying hats to be supplied to the 16 countryside locations nationwide that are part of Get Ahead Hats.

Ladies come from all over Lancashire and from as far away as Liverpool, St Anne's and Manchester to try on hats in the comfort of Sarah's home. "Some weddings stipulate that you have to wear a hat. Some ladies worry because certain hats have to be worn on a certain place on the head, and it has to be right. I can fit them," she said.

At any one time Sarah may have between 200 and 250 hats available to hire, but within the network there are thousands available to buy. She travels all over to buy them -- Birmingham, London, Harrogate, and the country's hat-making capital, Luton -- and keeps in contact with the other branches, arranging for the hats to be transported carefully by Business Post to franchises in need of more supplies.

It's a complete change of career for Sarah, who went to catering college in Accrington and later worked for Gardner Merchant, part of Trust House Forte, as an area supervisor before organising the catering for the National and Provincial Building Society in Burnley.

Now she gives talks to ladies' groups and recently helped raise more than £1,000 for Breakthrough, the breast cancer charity, with a fashion show for Blackburn Business and Professional Women at the Clarion Hotel, Foxfields.

But the job's not without its funny side. Sarah recalls one occasion when a woman who had hired a hat rang up the following morning, distressed that her husband had said he wouldn't go with her if she was wearing that hat. Sarah persuaded the woman to put her chosen outfit on and let him see it again. There was no problem -- it turned out he had seen it teamed with her nightie the first time!