At the age of just sixteen, Team 17 CEO Debbie Bestwick was facing one of the most important decisions of her life. She was doing her A Levels, needed some funds for the summer holidays and there were two jobs in Nottingham that she was interested in: one in a fruit-and-veg store, and one in a video games shop. She’d fallen in love with video games age 12 – ever since playing Football Manager on her brother’s Spectrum – so the prospect of working with them felt, in her words, like “heaven”. She left the world of vegetables behind... we all make sacrifices.

“I never went back to finish my A Levels,” Bestwick tells me. “I fell in love with the games industry. One thing about a retail environment – I didn’t appreciate it at the time – but it’s direct to consumer. Direct to your audience. There’s no better learning experience when you’re trying to understand what people’s expectations are. This was a new form of entertainment and it was taking over.”

Not long after taking her part-time job, the manager of the shop quit and she was offered the job in his place. Within 12 months, Bestwick negotiated sale of the company to an entrepreneur based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. The entrepreneur, Michael Robinson, had a retail chain called Microbyte across the UK and a superstore in Broadmarsh shopping centre, Nottingham. Bestwick, tucked away in her little indie shop, was building up a strong and loyal customer base, and the superstore couldn’t pry her customers away.