EVERYTHING is coming up roses for an East Lancashire online florist, wine and hamper firm after it scooped the export award.

Colonial Gifts, trading as iflorist, based in Padiham, has seen sales soar by 200 per cent during the past 12 months, with Christmas sales treble what they were last year.

It has a network of 10,000 partners allowing it to offer same-day delivery within 60 per cent of the time zones in the 110 countries it services worldwide.

Websites have been set up in 20 countries, in eight languages and five currencies.

And in the next two years it envisages increasing that number of websites to 72.

They also accept 80 different credit cards through a global payment system.

Product design is tailored so that gifts are relevant and appropriate for the individual regional markets they reach.

Operations manager Tim Picton said: “It’s fantastic. We set out to achieve targets and we’re going over them year on year. We’re 200 per cent up on this time last year, which is an amazing feat.

“It’s through the staff who have helped us along and our co-founder David Price’s ideas that pull the business through.

“One thing this year we decided to do is invest in staff. We have taken on five apprentices, which has been probably one of better things we’ve done. We’ve invested in the area as well.”

He said sales in America and Australia were also blossoming.

“Australia is growing at such a fast rate. France used to be the biggest export.

“It’s something we have wanted to move forward for quite a while and it’s started to reap rewards,” said Tim.