Like a network of trains ferrying commuters, Bigjigs Toys staff move briskly through the criss-crossing corridors of cardboard boxes piled to the ceiling.

The warehouse at the company’s Folkestone headquarters is working at full capacity. Men in high-vis jackets pull trolleys and pump trucks carrying cartons of wooden trains and dolls’ houses for each order, whizzing pallets to the loading bays.

Yet this heightened activity is far from the mad rush expected for a toy firm in the run-up to Christmas, the most important retail period of the year. In fact, everyone looks calm.

“A different part of the business is always busy,” said Liz Ireland, director and co-founder of the wooden toy business, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year.

“Right now the warehouse is busy finding containers and shipping them out, but then in January and February the sales force is very busy at trade shows.

“At other times the graphics team is busy preparing the catalogues for the next year and three or four months before that the design team will be completing their work.”

The work ethic at Bigjigs is typical of a family business. It has yielded results, with turnover doubling in the last four years, mainly thanks to expansion into European markets since 2009.

After the Christmas rush the focus will turn to preparations for the three biggest toy events of the year: the Toy Fair in London, Nuremburg Toy Fair and the Spring Fair at the NEC.

Each happens within five weeks of each other in January and February.

“We tell existing customers about new products, but we are also looking for new business,” said Liz, 58, who runs the firm with semi-retired husband Peter, 70, and their sons Sam, 29, and Tom, 27.

“When that comes along, it has to be followed up promptly and efficiently. We see a lot of people at those three shows and a lot of follow-ups have to be done.

“All businesses like ours start with the products. If the product is not right, then no one will want to buy it.

“We have to sell good products that offer not just play value but also educational value for children. Wooden toys are traditional, but they do vary.”

The firm has come a long way from the days when Peter and Liz used to make and sell the toys. Manufacturing is outsourced to the Far East and today the company is a wholesaler, with its products sold in John Lewis, Trotters and Mulberry Bush online toy shop, as well as being listed on Amazon.

It moved to West Park Farm Industrial Estate in Folkestone in 2003, initially with one unit and eventually expanding to cover 40,000sq ft across two sites on the estate.

International sales have spearheaded recent growth, but selling abroad brings its complexities. The company buys from its suppliers in dollars and sells in pounds, euros and zlotys, the Polish currency.

“We based our terms and conditions on the way we would want to work with a supplier,” said Liz, who lives in Ottinge, near Folkestone.

“There are options about how clients can buy and order, the quantities they can buy and the ways they can settle an account.

“If people want to place an order on the telephone, they can. If they want to buy in euros or pounds, they can, and if they want to pay by cheque, they can. What’s good for one customer may not be good for another.”

Bigjigs Toys development has been driven by its family ties.

It was founded in 1985 after Peter Ireland, director Liz’s husband, decided to take a craft design and technology course at Brunel University to avoid having to keep teaching PE when he reached middle age.

He started making toys in his spare time and gave them to family members.

When friends began asking him to make wooden trains and puzzles for their children, he and Liz realised they had a potential business.

The pair quit their jobs as teachers at Castlemount school in Dover and launched the company from a garden shed at their former home in Acrise, near Folkestone.

Yet making a living manufacturing and selling toys at farmers’ markets and craft fairs was not going to give them a business they could pass on to their children, who had both expressed an interest in joining when they grew up.

The company had already evolved to a wholesaler, with manufacturing outsourced to the Far East in 1998.

The focus of the UK operations has become designing the toys, winning retail clients, marketing and distribution.

Oldest son Sam, 29, is now operations manager, while Tom, 27, is head of international sales.

“We were keen to get the model right,” said Liz. “We decided we were going to make the business work with all four of us and then the boys could join when they were ready.”

Bigjigs Toys has been no stranger to publicity and has pulled off a series of high-profile stunts.

The company attracted national attention when it applied for the West Coast Main Line franchise.

Its former marketing co-ordinator George Poole, pictured, wrote to Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin after the controversial decision to award the contract to FirstGroup from Virgin Trains was scrapped in 2012.

He said its services had no delays and suffered no overcrowding or accidents, that the lines were not affected by snow or leaves and that it charged no fares.

The letter received a tongue-in-cheek reply from a civil servant saying the department feared its wooden carriages could be a safety issue.

The company steamed into the record books in the same year after a successful Guinness World Record attempt to make the longest wooden railway in the world. The track stretchinged 1.2km.

Director Liz Ireland said: “It highlighted the strength of the team. A lot of planning went into it a long time before the event.

“It was just raised in a staff meeting, but the more we thought about it the more we realised we could get that world record.”