Julie Colclough took offence when an astute career guidance teacher once told her she had the makings of an entrepreneur. "To me that was only the next best thing to being a chancer," she recalls, smiling in recognition of that teacher's perceptiveness. "It's only in hindsight that I realise there's a degree of respectability associated with being an entrepreneur."

She may not be a chancer, but the 39-yearold managing director of Euro Base - the Waterford-based logistics management company she founded eight years ago - has never been afraid to take risks.

She started the company by renting a warehouse with the help of money borrowed from a friend. To begin with she had just one client, albeit a prestigious one in the games manufacturer Milton Bradley - now Hasbro - which had a short-term need for extra warehousing space. A three-month contract was signed and during that time she frantically, and successfully, pursued other business.

Hasbro is still a client, along with other major companies like Allied Signal, Wyeth Medica, Huffy Sports, Rhone Poulenc, Hays Chemicals, Bausch & Lomb and Waterford Crystal.

With 50 employees today and plans for further expansion, she has the luxury of delegating tasks to others, but it was very different in the beginning. Then, with just one other worker in the company, she took on any number of tasks - telephonist, typist, receptionist and even forklift driver.

"In the early days I did drive a forklift. I had to learn because there were only two people and if one was on the phone when something had to be done it was `get out, get stuck into it'. I could be driving the forklift in the morning and be at a business meeting with my suit on at lunch time.

"When I look back at it I laugh, but it gave me an understanding of other jobs. I understand the stresses and strains of being a forklift driver. I don't think there's a job within this business that at one stage I didn't do myself."

She was never afraid to tackle more than one job at a time. After sitting her Leaving Cert at the Mercy Convent in Waterford, she worked in a variety of jobs, including one at a pirate radio station in Clonmel, where she sold advertising while doubling as a current affairs researcher.

She also sold aluminium windows for a New Ross-based firm before getting her first experience of the freight industry when TNT Express gave her a job in telesales in 1982, shortly after she completed an intensive sales training course in Dublin. By her own admission, the competition for the job was not intense.

"Fortunately for me, in 1982 there weren't too many people in Waterford who understood the concept of telesales. Quite a few people attended the interview and the majority of them, I think, thought that telesales was selling telephones. When I arrived at the interview your man was so delighted that somebody understood what telesales was that I was given the job straight away."

By 1986 she had risen to the position of regional sales manager when TNT closed its Waterford office. She was offered the opportunity to move to Cork but, having just had the first of her three daughters, she decided to take redundancy.

She toyed with the idea of joining her husband, Tony, in his upholstery business. But almost by accident, she remained in the freight industry. Former customers continued to contact her about their freight needs, and she began to act as a contact between them and shipping providers.

After doing this for four years she started Euro Base in 1991 with a total investment of £9,000 (€11,428). Most of the money was spent travelling in the US, looking for clients. She knew that with the advent of customs deregulation within the EU, American companies exporting to Europe would soon be placed at a considerable disadvantage.

"I thought there was an opportunity there for a company to assist US companies into Europe, hence the name Euro Base. My idea was to establish a warehousing and transport base in Ireland where US companies could ship goods before breaking them into smaller units for delivery into Europe."

Having Milton Bradley on board helped secure other clients for a business which, over the years, has grown into a much more sophisticated operation than either of its two most visible elements - warehousing and transport. Services provided include stock and inventory management, and value-adding elements like final assembly and localised packaging for different markets.

Euro Base specialises in areas which, Ms Colclough recognised early on, potential clients are not very good at themselves. "The emphasis in a manufacturing company is always going to be on production. They're not looking at issues like warehousing as closely as we can."

To use her own expression, it is not the sexiest industry to be in, but she relishes the challenges it brings. "I'm passionate about the industry, I absolutely love it, and that's what drives me. It's exciting because it has undergone huge changes since my first involvement in it."

International recognition of her achievements came three years ago when she received the prestigious European Innovative Woman Entrepreneur Award, beating other finalists from Sweden, France, Spain and Portugal to receive the honour - and the 3,000-ecu prize, which was ploughed straight back into the business - at a gala ceremony in the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.

The award catapulted her into a round of media interviews, after-dinner speeches and addresses to various groups which went on for five months before she called a halt. "You can lose your grasp of reality . . . I just decided I had to get back to concentrating on the business and not be getting swept away." She still talks to groups occasionally and is "flattered to be asked".

If there is one thing immediately apparent about Julie Colclough - everyone, including herself, pronounces it Coakley - it's that this straight-talker is unlikely to be swept away by any number of awards.

There is no doubting her ambition either. She wants Euro Base to be a leader in its field, not only in the south-east, but in the Republic and Europe. Its Waterford operation will be expanded this year with the opening of a new 20,000 sq ft unit beside its current headquarters at the IDA industrial park, and plans are afoot to establish a Dublin or Cork operation. Turnover, which reached £1.3 million in 1998, is targeted to hit £1.8 million this year.

She is still keeping several balls in the air at once. She completed her diploma in corporate direction at University College Cork last year and prior to that did a 2 1/2-year business development programme with the Irish Management Institute. She makes a point of never being in the office before 9.30 a.m. so that she can take her children to school.

But she is not one of those envied types who need only six hours sleep a night. "I have to have eight hours sleep. If I got any less they wouldn't want me to come to work and my children certainly wouldn't want to know me."