Amid all the talk of a credit crunch, anyone who dares mention some snippet of good news can expect to be beaten down with a large stick and told that this time next year their house will be worthless and, if they still have a job, their monthly salary won't cover the weekly shopping bill.

Some industries have certainly been harder hit than most. Housing developments across the country have become unfinished ghost towns, hauliers are struggling with soaring fuel prices and the hospitality industry is struggling to make ends meet.

According to the short-term forecast, there are more dark clouds on the horizon, but, before we all surrender any hope for the future, it seems some businesses are defying the doom-mongers.



The Deli

Steve and Julia Holding, owners of the Pig and Pastry delicatessen and café in Bishopthorpe Road, York.

WE used to run a pub in Sutton on the Forest, but always wanted to run our own café and deli. When we first started to think about opening the business there was no sign of the credit crunch, but as things started to take shape there seemed to be more doom and gloom and, by the time we were ready to open three weeks ago, we were really nervous. It's only early days, but we have been really taken aback by how supportive other local businesses have been and by the amount of customers we've had.

We used to live in London and the idea was to open the kind of shop and café we liked to go to down there. Quite a few people have said the area has been crying out for something like this, which is great. It's been a conscious effort to use local producers so the meat we sell is reared nearby, and the pork and Wensleydale pies come from Cryer and Stott Cheesemongers in Pontefract.

Eventually we want to get the outside catering side of the business up and running, but we've been so overwhelmed with customers that we've already had to turn some work down. We honestly couldn't have asked for a better start to the business.


The Campsite

Georgina Farnell, owns Mason's Campsite and Caravan Park in Wharfedale, with partner Grant Hinchliffe.

We're fully booked every Friday and Saturday night during the summer and the school holidays start this week which should give a boost to mid-week bookings.

A lot of families are looking for a cheaper alternative to the traditional two-week break abroad, and the phone definitely rings more when the state schools are about to break up. The really good thing is that people are already starting to book for September and there's a beer festival in the village in October, which means we should be busy right through autumn.

People seem to becoming much more accepting of the British weather. Two weekends ago a couple of people doing the Dales Way turned up. They were sodden and their tent ended up pretty much underwater, so we let them stay in the house, but that's as extreme as it gets. To be honest people seem happy to camp whatever the weather, the only thing which seems to put them off is superstition – Friday 13th was about the quietest day we've had so far.


The Outdoor Shop

Ian Brown managing director of Foothills outdoor equipment specialists in Sheffield.

I keep waiting for the recession to happen, but so far it's been business as usual. We are a specialist shop so tend not to follow the high street trends, and while that means we miss out on the peaks, it also means we miss out on the troughs.

Also our client base tends to be older, often retired and reasonably affluent, they're the kind of people who are the least affected by house prices falling and mortgages going up.

Walking has become more fashionable in recent years and that has helped boost business.

Most people moan when it rains, but for us it's not necessarily a bad thing, as it encourages people to spend that little bit more on boots and waterproofs. What is it they say? Every cloud has a silver lining.



The Travel Agent

David Coates, managing director of Independent Ski Links, Hornsea.

Skiers are pretty robust and because it's a hobby, not just a holiday, if things are getting a little tight they tend to forgo other trips to ensure they get a break on the snow. We started the business 15 years ago, after the last recession so we don't have any direct experience of how a credit crunch will affect us, but at the moment people still seem to booking holidays well in advance.

Right from the beginning we were internet and telephone-based which means we don't have the high overheads of some other travel agents. The ski market did stagnate in the 1990s, but the rise of snowboarding gave it a real boost.

Because it is an expensive holiday a lot of people like to book through a specialist travel agent rather than organising it themselves. North America has grown in popularity and may be even more popular this winter because of the exchange rates. Our biggest advantage has to be our knowledge and hopefully that will stand us in good stead throughout the coming months.


The Pub

Adam Gray, general manager of Ye Olde Punch Bowl in Marton-cum-Grafton, near Harrogate, which was recently taken over by Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey and Yorkshire chef Richard Fox.

We are lucky in that we are in a prime location, close to the A1, near to Harrogate and York and it's an area where perhaps people aren't feeling the pinch quite as much as they are elsewhere. Having Neil on board obviously helped raise the profile and I think we are still benefiting from the celebrity-effect. However, at some point that will wear off and we will stand or fall on the quality of the food we serve. The weekends are incredibly busy, but even mid-week week we can serve 45 or 50 people. They may only have a main course, but it's still bums on seats.

When you start a business one of the most important things is not to be afraid to be flexible. We came in with our own ideas of how the pub should be run, but after canvassing opinion some things like the lunch menu has changed and we have started doing a quiz night on a Sunday which we never thought we would.

We have the brewery on site which cuts down the cost of transporting beer and means we don't have to deal with a middleman. Things like that add up and I also think that having the brewery makes us stand out from other pubs. It's a point of difference which people enjoy.


The Record Shop

Ian De-Whytell, owner of Crash Records in Leeds

The summer is always a bit of a quiet time for us because
of people going away on holiday, but there are still things to be positive about. Since the rise of downloads, most of the money we make comes from ticket sales rather than CDs, but the one thing we have always been desperate for is the kind of sizable venue a city like Leeds deserves.

Leeds Academy is due to open in October and that has already given us a bit of boost. The Last Shadow Puppets have just announced a gig there
and they seem to be attracting some big names, like Goldfrapp, Pendulum and James.

A band like Elbow, who use a full orchestra, just couldn't have played Leeds before, so it's going to be great for the city's music scene.

People always need to be entertained and maybe when the economy is
doing badly they need something to look forward to even more.


The Knitting Shop

Pam Hoyle, owner of Bobbins in Whitby

We've been in this business since 1983 and during the last recession were forced to close the shop we had in York because we couldn't afford the rent. Two years ago we had a boom year and I would be lying if I said things hadn't quietened off a little bit since then.

If your business is strong enough, when times are tough you just have to put your head down and hope you can ride the storm.

The real advantage we've got is location. Whitby is still packed with tourists and because it's a virtually unspoilt seaside resort it's always going to be a place people want to come to.

My husband runs an antique business and there still seems to be people willing to invest in something unique.

We sell a lot of high quality and luxury yarns and hopefully catering for customers who want to knit something of beautiful quality will help us through the next year.


The Boutique

Lucy Weller, owner of Selkie in York, which recently got a TV makeover in the BBC2 series Mary Queen of Shops.

During the last recession I was working in the theatre as a set-designer and I panicked, I'm not about to make the same mistake twice. I really believe that a positive outlook is key to making a business a success. I don't have a commercial brain, which was one of the reasons we agreed to appear on the television show. I learnt so much from Mary Portas about targetting customers and about making people want to come into the shop.

Things have been going really well since the programme went out. I'm confident that we know have strong foundations on which to build the business. I think when the big high street stores began to monopolise city centres, many independent shops struggled, but that I think is changing.

People seem keen to buy clothes which they know aren't stocked anywhere else and our ranges by young Yorkshire designers are doing incredibly well. Running your own business can be stressful, but when you get the formula right there's no better feeling and if there was one word to sum up how I feel at the moment, it's "excited".


The Bookshop

Sara Waddington, owner of Simply Books in Pocklington

Small businesses have to go that extra mile, you can't just stand in your shop and hope people come in. We organised a literary festival recently and we sold more than 300 tickets to the various events and got people coming from Bridlington and Scarborough. It was about raising our profile – a lot of people come in to the shop and because we're tucked away think we've only just opened.

Obviously the run up to Christmas is our busiest time, but when you run your own business and things go a bit quiet then of course you start to panic. We seemed to be quite dead in May, but when we actually looked back at the books we realised we had actually been busier than the previous year.

We know we need to encourage more people to shop locally rather than driving to York or Beverley and the plan is to run events at the bookshop every month.

People are definitely more conscious about how much they are spending on say petrol and if they don't have to drive 10 or 15 miles to somewhere else they won't.

I like to think that people will always want to read and what we need to do now is keep the momentum going. If people talk too much about a recession then it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.