Martin Lawrence is Brighton and Hove bred, if not quite born.

Apart from a "horrible" period living out of a suitcase in London, the city has been his home since the age of two when his parents moved here from leafy Surrey.

Over the past 20 years, the entrepreneur has employed more than 200 people in the city and developed a cheerful, phlegmatic approach to the peaks and troughs of business.

He knows what it's like to make your mark and realise ambitions. Equally, he knows what it feels like to lose sight of your dreams, to forget why you went into something in the first place and to lose control of something you have nurtured.

In the past year or so, he has been selling off his Bazar gift-shop chain, a successful but ultimately unfulfilling foray into retail which, for Michael, had become something of an albatross round his neck.

His latest venture, Architectural Features, in Blatchington Road, Hove, reflects his desire to downsize and rekindle his passion for business at a customer-facing level.

It is a sort of antique-shop-cumsalvage-yard and has all sorts of weird and wonderful treasures for the home and garden, such as stone mosaic table tops, tin baths and original French doors.

It's not cheap but Michael reckons he has found a niche market in a growing number of people who have tired of IKEA's universalism and want to put some originality back into their homes.

He says: "This shop is about finding something that will be the centre of attention in a room or garden and, from personal experience, I have found those items very difficult to find.

"Some things like French doors are almost impossible to source nowadays in their original form, and if you are lucky enough to find them, the chances are they will be very expensive."

Michael has a bulging contacts book from carrying out renovations on his own homes so can source reproduction pieces at a good price from manufacturers.

When he needs to get hold of original features, he heads east. He said: "We get a lot of our stuff from Poland, Hungary, the Eastern Bloc, purely because those countries haven't been heavily regenerated by developers yet and a lot of old buildings are still intact.

"We have been knocking stuff down and rebuilding for years over here so many original features have been destroyed and those that survived have become much sought after.

"People in the UK are very aware of what they have now. You used to be able to pick some real bargains up from Brighton market when people were just chucking the stuff away. Not now."

"We have gone through the minimalism phase, white walls, white furniture, people thought they were being original but it just looked like an MFI show house.

"I am not being cruel - we did the same - but increasing numbers of people are looking for original pieces again, something they can enjoy, something a bit eccentric."

Equipped with an HND in Business Studies from Brighton Polytechnic, Michael has enjoyed a varied career, either as employer or employee, but there has always been a common thread.

"My thing has always been exploring and developing niche markets or importing and exporting - bringing products that have been successful overseas into the UK and vice versa.

"My claim to fame was when I was working for Palmer & Harvey in the early Seventies and I was instrumental in getting tobacco and confectionery into petrol filling stations."

I wonder what changes he has seen in Brighton and Hove since he moved here in 1953.

Michael replied: "The real change has been spiritual. Yes physically it is changing all the time and probably for the better.

"There have been some horrible buildings but it's growing all the time as a town."

I note he still uses the word town.

"Yes I am not keen on Brighton and Hove's development into a city. It has lost lots of its laid-back, easy-going feel and it has become a very difficult place to do business - or anything really.

"It seems to be the intention of local and central government to turn Brighton into an extension of London, so they have the same parking restrictions and the same harsh approach to people as they do in the capital. And, of course, we have seen a massive increase in rents."

Warming to his theme, he declares: "Brighton is in danger of committing suicide.

"It's real value was that it attracted wild, different and cool people, because it was so laid back.

"If you turn it into a suburb of London then you will attract all the accountants and the solicitors who just want to live their lives sensibly. It will lose its zany-ness, its wildness.

"There are a group of people, a clique, for whom Brighton has become a commodity, a play-thing.

"If it was a toy, they would be the toy moguls but none of them have done any real time in the city. Once it has passed its usefulness, they will just leave I am afraid."

So what advice does he have for people starting out in business today?

"Never forget what it is you want from life. It is very easy to get caught up in the development side of business like I did at Bazar but if you are happy running one shop and you are comfortable with it, why expand?"