Laura Ashley was the founder and the manager of a global fabric and furnishings empire. Laura Ashley was born in Dowlais Top, home to a generation of miners and iron ore Ashley - whom she had met at a local youth club - and settled into a conventional life as a mother and housewife. Ashley's world-famous floral prints were sown first in the couple's small basement flat in London's Pimlico. Ashley began making mats, napkins and tea towels which she would carry around trying to sell to various stores. With this successful marketing strategy they reach to more customers. Then Bernard Ashley resigned and set up a family business. They produced fabrics under the name of Ashley Mountney Company in their first factory in Kent. The success in the small island of England was not enough for this passionate entrepreneur. Compared with the expensively tailored, 'county lifestyle' image of Laura Ashley clothes today, the originals were, if anything, anti-fashion. Designed to be worn in the home they were initially, made by women in their homes. Bundles of clothes would be driven by van from fireside to fireside where housewives would turn collars and cuffs for 'pin money'. Before long, factories were set up in the heart of rural mid Wales and by the mid 1970s dresses from Wales were being sold across Europe - shops were opened in Paris, Geneva and Brussels. The success was phenomenal and totally unexpected. She had hit upon a "brand new version of the past" - a reaction against male-dictated 60s fashion. She wanted this rural idyll to become part of everyday life. She wanted something that women in the home, looking after children, could be comfortable in. The success of the 1970s proved an almost unshakeable foundation. By 1981 the Ashley's - which had by now expanded into home furnishing - had 5,000 retail outlet throughout the world. In the same year, Laura Ashley realized a long-held ambition and opened a shop in the Welsh capital In 1984 her headquarters opened in Newtown, Powys, creating 500 jobs and in early 1985 another factory opened in Gresford near Wrexham. Laura Ashley was dead in the age of 60 in Cotswolds. At the point of her untimely death, the company employed 4,000 staff and was on the brink of further expansion Valued at £200m, the company was floated on the Stock Exchange and soon realized an increased turnover of £296.6m. Attempts to turn around the losses, which began emerging in 1991, have proved abortive. Now, the last of Laura Ashley's five factories in her beloved Wales is to be closed.