IT started with woodworking kits given as Christmas presents to a young boy. That, in turn, led to a degree from Britain's premier arts college. And then came the "Eureka" moment which caused a Skipton furniture designer to create a product which is on the verge of selling in its millions worldwide.

It might be difficult for some to think of a simple stacking table as an international design icon. If so, imagine this: it has been designed to be a "brother and sister" piece of furniture to stand with a stacking chair which has sold 12 million units.

Earby-born John Bollen is one of those rare creative people who is good with both his hands and his head. When his fertile imagination seizes on a design idea, he has the manual dexterity to turn it into concrete (or rather wood, steel and plastic) form.

And one of those "Eureka moments" came to him when he was sitting having a cup of coffee on his show-stand at a furniture trade exhibition in Denmark.

Across the aisle was a stand run by an American company which produces the world's best-selling stacking chair, the 40/4, which has a tale to tell in its own right.

It was designed by a former United States bomber gunner David Roland, who had undergone agonies of discomfort because of poor seat design on long missions over Germany in World War Two.

As a result, when he got home he resolved to design a simple stacking chair that people could relax in through long lectures, speeches or exams without getting the proverbial pain in the bum or, worse, painful cramps.

Since then, Roland has become a multi-millionaire and his chairs have sold more than 12 million throughout the world - there are 2,500 of them in London's St Paul's Cathedral alone.

But as John Bollen sat sipping his coffee in Denmark that morning, he suddenly realised that no-one had ever come up with a design for a stacking table to match the 40/4 chair.

"The design came to my head in a simple flash," he recalls. "It was truly my Eureka moment."

His new Tutor table was launched recently in Denmark, where it is being manufactured in industrial quantities, and it is likely to make John and his wife Samantha rich. But before it came a long struggle and a huge financial gamble, which could have left them and their three sons penniless.

John Bollen's father was a London musician who met his wife, an Earby lass, during the war and moved to Craven when they got married.

Dad liked making things and, every Christmas, presented his son with a bigger and better wood-working set - "the sort of toys that really were truly educational but you don't seem them much any more."

The technical/creative theme was followed up at Keighley Secondary Technical School - "you don't have those sorts of schools any more, either, which is a great shame."

His latent talent took him off to Hornsey College of Art in London and, later, to a master's degree in industrial design at the super-prestigious Royal College of Art.

But what to do then? He worked for other people for 12 years, an experience he didn't much like ("I need to work on my own ideas, not on other people's") so he set up in a small workshop in Otley Street, Skipton, and did a lot of deep thinking.

"I was aware that office space was becoming very expensive to rent and this is turn meant that available space needed to be used to meet different functions," he explained. "The same space might be the boardroom, a meeting room, a place for product demonstrations or even the office Christmas party.

"But the same bits of traditional heavy, difficult to move furniture could not serve all those different needs properly. What was needed was a range of light but elegantly designed furniture that could be reconfigured in a few minutes. The design came to me quite quickly. The problem was: how to raise the money to build the prototypes?"

With their first son just a baby, the couple borrowed the then staggering sum of £60,000 and the Simpla furniture system came into being, a design that was snapped up by the London agents of a big Danish furniture manufacturer.

It proved a big hit and is in use in 14 countries in prestige buildings like the Tate Modern art gallery in London, Ken Livingston's London Headquarters (known to Cockneys as the Glass Gherkin), and the world-wide HQ of the giant HSBC bank.

Royalty payments paid off the couple's debts but, for John in particular, the question of what to design next became a problem.

And it was over that cup of coffee at the Danish furniture show that he looked over at the 40/4 chair stand and he suddenly realised: lots of people need a stacking table to go with those chairs.

As he says now: "We don't expect to sell 12 million tables like the chairs but sales are predicted to run into the millions. The royalties from that could give us the chance to retire, I suppose, but we won't. That financial cushion will allow me to experiment with new designs without worrying about the risk of failure."

And, with a rueful smile, wife Samantha added: "The idea of retiring somewhere in the sun sounds delicious at times. But I'm starting up a new antiques business here in Skipton. We both like to be busy I suppose."

Good luck to them both: they have the talent, did the hard work, took the risks and deserve their success.