Fresh from winning the National Business award for innovation, Richard North is in buoyant mood. His toy company's first own-brand product, Dave the Funky Shoulder Monkey, was on course to be 2010's best-seller, having shifted 300,000 units before Christmas.

North, who took part in Channel 4's The Secret Millionaire, bought Wow! Stuff in 2006. "I had run the company within a larger group, so I knew the business well and I had ideas for how we might make it better," he says. At the time the business held only one licence to produce Science Museum toys. "In the first year of trading that was the only brand we had and the company was mainly an importer of novelty gifts and gadgets from Hong Kong; only 10 products were from the Science Museum brand while the other 30 were imports," he explains. Today he holds licences for five other brands in addition to the Wow! Stuff it makes and sells direct to major retailers.

North started out running the optics division for a larger company when he was 22, and after eight years he set up his own business selling telescopic sights to target-shooters. "You are either an employee and you are prepared to not take risks and end up with a bonus or you become an employer, you take risks but you also end up with the rewards," he says."It was a small enough business to become a fairly big cog in the sector. I sold it for a seven-figure sum in 2001."

But he went from boom to bust when his second company, website boysstuff.co.uk, went into administration in 2005. "We ended up with too many people on board and too many ideas on strategy. We tried to do too many things in a short period of time," he says. "I had become remote from the business as there were so many people running it, so I wasn't feeling that emotional, but what did feel emotional was that I had lost huge amounts of money."

With Wow! Stuff, North wanted to "go back to doing things my way". He started with six people four years ago but today he employs 48 across three offices in the UK, San Francisco and Hong Kong. Annual sales have risen to more than £17m and his ambition is to hit £640m in sales by 2020.

The business launched in the US last year and North is aiming high. "Currently 90 per cent of business is in the UK, but this year the plan is to treble in size and 40 per cent of business will be international. By the end of next year 75 per cent will be outside the UK," he says.

"Just one US customer will do more business next year than the whole of the UK business did last year," he says. "American retailers love our products," he says. "We have got a fantastic international business just ready to pick that low-hanging fruit, and cash in on it."