A GARDENING firm is branching out into overseas markets after launching an innovative new website.

Within hours of First Tunnels' new site going live, the Barrowford company began receiving enquiries from green fingered foreign customers.

Now, the company regularly sends shipments over to France and Ireland. "We even despatched one order to the Falkland Islands the other day!" said partner Sean Barker.

First Tunnels, which was founded in 1991, specialises in designing and manufacturing "polytunnels" aimed mainly at the amateur gardening market.

Although there are many firms supplying commercial gardeners with large-scale products, First Tunnels focuses on tunnels for domestic gardens and allotments.

It also supplies products to public sector customers including prisons and NHS Trusts and to gardening celebrities such as Alan Titchmarsh.

Over the years, the firm has developed a successful brochure-based mail order business and also established a presence on the internet, but recently decided to look at creating a new website.

"My own background is in computing so we had a pretty good idea of exactly what we wanted the site to look like and what it needed to be able to do," said Sean.

Sean turned to Bert Greenhalgh, a Pendle Enterprise Trust adviser, who has been advising First Tunnels for several years. He helped First Tunnels shape their ideas and introduced them to eBusinessUK which developed the site.

"We were very pleased with the results and it has definitely led to an increase in inquiries. Developing such a comprehensive site was a major investment for our company and the help we received through Bert and the enterprise trust was invaluable," said Sean.

Kam Kothia, managing director of eBusiness UK, said the project was one of the more complex e-commerce sites his firm had handled: "It involved quite a lot of bespoke software."