I suppose I first started to think about foreign currency exchange back at the beginning of the 1990s - I have to admit that I was never much of a "foreign traveller", so my experience as a customer was pretty limited, but then something happened that set me thinking.

At the time, I was running what could best be described as a sort of novelties and souvenir type shop unit, in the centre of Portsmouth, and when a small flotilla of Russian warships paid our city a courtesy visit, we were suddenly swamped by all these Russian sailors, all brandishing American dollars (although not many per man, I hasten to add, as their pay then would have made our sailors seem like millionaires!)

We quickly established an approximate exchange rate of the dollar to the pound and, for the next few days, we enjoyed a busier than usual period, at the same time chatting away and making friends with all our visitors, who were like a bunch of kids in a giant toy shop.

It was when I came to exchange all those dollars back into pounds sterling that I came face-to-face with the (then) realities of buying and selling foreign currencies.

Not only hadn't I realised that the rate we would get back for our dollars would be less than that advertised on the window board of our nearest foreign exchange (the board showed their selling rate), but they also charged us 4% for the privilege of selling them a load of dollars that they were immediately going to sell back to customers at a nice profit!

So, I tried my own bank, but the story was much the same there and, although I shopped around a bit more, it soon became clear that there seemed to be an "unofficial" cartel - it was a closed shop and there was nothing I could do except bite the bullet ... unless I was planning a holiday in the USA, which I certainly wasn't!

It didn't happen immediately, but about a year or so later, I got into conversation with a family member, who had travelled the world a lot more than I had and who I hadn't seen for many years and it transpired that he was looking for an investment opportunity and had also considered the potential of opening up a bureau de change.

The more we discussed the possibilities, the more we became convinced that if we didn't charge commission and were content with the basic narrow margins on the exchange transactions themselves, holidaymakers and other people travelling abroad would come flocking to us - and so, a few months after that, we opened our first InterCash branch, in what seemed a very unlikely location, except that it had - and still has - plenty of free parking all around it.

If we were expecting to be over run from the beginning, we would have been disappointed; amazingly, because we weren't charging commission and because we weren't doing what a lot of bureaux in London were doing then - ie no commission, but a really poor exchange rate deal - a lot of people were convinced there had to be a catch!

I suppose that was a combination of good old British caution and the fact that everyone had just got so used to having to pay through the nose for their foreign currency, or for selling unused currency back again after their travels.

At the time, I still had my city centre shop unit, so I set about converting part of it to use as a second foreign exchange branch - more people walked past it every day, but there was still a bit of uncertainty ... so mainly people continued to walk past it, although we did start to attract a few more customers.

By now it was the middle of June1993 - we had opened the first branch at the beginning of May that year - and I was pinning my hopes on a rise in trade as the summer holiday season approached, although I'll readily confess now that, back then, I was beginning to wonder if our original business plan theories would actually come to be.

July didn't seem to be that much busier than June, but looking back, I suppose people were already talking about us and had taken more notice of what we were doing than I had realised - certainly, given a limited advertising budget, what happened next had to be down to word-of-mouth.

Okay, so it coincided with the beginning of the school holidays, but it was so sudden, with no warning, that I was taken completely by surprise - from 15 to 20 customers per day in each branch, suddenly the city centre branch had queues out of the door and even the Gladstone Place branch was suddenly serving more than a hundred customers on some days.

We had become something of a summer sensation in Portsmouth and, as we moved through August, things just got busier and busier, although we knew that they would tail off again as we moved into autumn.

Fair enough, things did ease up towards mid-September, but not as much as I had anticipated and, as our reputation grew, by October we were back doing levels of trade not far short of what we had been doing in late July - which really was astonishing, if you think about it.

So, we'd arrived ... and we intended to stay, but there was more to come, as I discovered early in November ...

One morning, the phone rang - not surprising, really, as the phone was always ringing, usually with customer enquiries, but this time it was different ... a man from the city council's estates department, from whom we were already leasing our Gladstone Place office.

Did I know that the Ferryport (only a couple of hundred metres or so from Gladstone Place, as it happens) were planning - and indeed, had started on - some major changes. No, I didn't.

Did I know that they had started building a new passenger travel centre, intended to serve those ferry customers who were taking their cars across the Channel. Well, as it had been a "no" to the first question, it had to be a "no" to that one, too.

Did I know that the council (and the ferryport management) were inviting companies to tender for the new bureau de change unit that would be included in this new centre? What part of "no" ...

Would we like to submit a tender for this new unit? Well, to quote that dratted dog in the telly advert - "Ohhhh ... yes!" Mind you, with several national and even international companies also tendering, we didn't expect much.

However, it appears that the parties concerned with awarding the contract liked not only the cut of our jib, but also the way in which we offered the best value for money to customers in our field. The fact that we almost certainly put in the most realistic tender probably helped a bit, too!

So, to cut a long story short, we opened up in Portsmouth's Continental Ferryport at the beginning of Easter, 1994 and we've been there ever since - and, once people from other parts of the country realised how much they saved by changing their money with us, they started hanging onto their sterling until they arrived at the port and now we have a huge number of faithful customers from all parts of the UK.

Well, those were the early days, a first year that started slowly, but went on to exceed all our expectations and from which we have built steadily, over the next 14 years.

Our competitors have often been forced to drop their commission charges in various attempts to win back some of our market share, but people who come to InterCash once, tend to stay loyal and we see them back again, year after year.

I'm often asked what I think is the secret of our success - apart from the fact that we consistently offer the best and fairest deals - and I think that can be answered quite easily.

Real people. The real people who make InterCash tick on a day-to-day basis, who serve the customers, answer their queries, take advance orders and help steer them on a straight course.

None of our initial staff - and very few of the current crew - had any experience in the world of banking. They've worked in all manner of fields: pubs, restaurants, shops, haulage ... they're a really diverse bunch, believe me.

As such, they have no preconceptions, no tendency to try to "mystify" what we do and they appreciate the value of friendly, honest customer service - and reliability. We do what we say on our tin - or we would do, if we had a tin!

And, before I sign off here, I'd like to offer my sincere thanks to all our staff, most of whom have now been with us for around a decade now - I couldn't wish for a better bunch ... and, more importantly, neither could you!