Ah “Man in a Shed syndrome” , I like it  Personally I wish to remain always a man in a shed, but I am aiming at a niece market where a workshop cannot “do” what I want to do. And therefore I charge accordingly. However an example of “Man in a Van “ would have been my Dad, who took his redundancy money and bought a Transit van and sold nappies to Nursery’s out of the backdoor. Same product the big boys were selling only he had no marketing, office storage or personal overheads. That said 10 years later he was the biggest private medical supplies business on the Fylde coast. Going from a transit full of nappies a week to 4 Artics full of Baby to Man size incontinence pants.,per week. Man in a shed is the start for some and the end for others.
Now my Dad is a Justice of the Peace an ex Major .. shop steward and Labour councillor , he ran his company by the book for 10 years but was investigated by the Inland revenue for 2 of those years. Why you may ask? Mainly because my Dad believe that sharing the good fortune created by hard work was more valuable than giving it to lazy arsed shareholders. So the wages where well above average and the company gave very generous bonuses. The turnover of staff was 0% throughout the life of the company and he retired with a good pension and some sizable assets. The Inland revenue couldn’t understand why he was paying so little profit tax on such a large turnover. They were basing the idea on the standard greedy owner who exploits his workers. Anyway I thought I would share .. its probs off topic but in my mind its knowledge worth sharing.