Five things you need to know about Dean Hoyle, new chairman of The Works

1. Mr Hoyle left school in Heckmondwike with no qualifications because he said he was too interested in football to learn. He decided to become an apprentice engineer.

2. It was an advert in The Yorkshire Post that first led him to abandon his engineering career and enter the greeting card market. “I saw a business for sale in The Yorkshire Post selling greeting cards out of the back of a van for £2,000,” he once said. “It only had a turnover of £36,000 so it was very small. I built it up to a £150,000 turnover in five years with a £50,000 profit.”

3. In 1997 he set up a shop in Wakefield with his wife Janet, which went on to become the Card Factory brand. The first day he opened the shop was nerve-racking.

“We opened the store at 9am and at 9.15am one old lady walked in and I thought, ‘The pressure’s on here’. I actually went upstairs, because I couldn’t handle it. At 9.45am my wife shouted up to me. I went downstairs to see what she wanted and as I turned the corner the shop was absolutely jam packed.”

4. He attributes Card Factory’s success to its combination of quality and value. “If people could shop in Harrods and pay Netto prices, that is the perfect scenario and we’re trying to give that kind of experience, ” he said.

5. Mr Hoyle believes he inherited the determination to succeed from his mother, a single parent who had to fight to keep him when he was a baby.

He told the Yorkshire Post in 2009: “I was due to be adopted when I was born but my mother decided to keep me. She was shunned and cast to one side because she was a single mother but she had a strong willpower and I think that’s probably came through to me, to be honest. I’ve got determination.”