Designer Dorota Terlecka – who was teamed up with manufacturer PAGOK by the programme – echoes this: “In the 1990s, the Polish consumer was undemanding because they had been starved of choice.” The sector was soon servicing Ikea and other European brands, and there are now 30,000 furniture producers scattered across Poland.

Like many of its peers, Lech-Pol has thrived in this environment. Its 12,000sq m factory produces 30,000 sofas a year, 90% of them for export to west Europe and Scandinavia. Wrzosek, who has been involved for 25 years, manages employee relations and knows everyone by name.

She strides confidently through the workshops, surrounded by piles of foam cushioning and wooden sofa frames, pointing out a cutting machine that can slice through 15 layers of fabric and greeting workers.

She, her daughter and granddaughter have achieved this while operating in a ‘man’s world’. “We have sometimes felt like pioneers,” says Alina Iwanicka, who remembers that “we were at first met with disbelief when we tried to buy equipment at a machinery fair.”

Fresh approach

But despite their success, Lech-Pol’s owners, and others in the industry, recognise that their very anonymity – coupled often with a reliance on just a few contracts – makes them vulnerable. “A lot of companies are afraid that Poland isn’t as cheap as it once was,” and they might lose work to a more cost-effective neighbour, such as Ukraine, says Terlecka.