E-commerce is opening up new business avenues every day. MARK ANSTEAD reports on two small traders that are successfully using the Internet to boost their profits and looks at how other businesses can join them on the web.

A small family owned business has begun selling over the Internet and reports a significant rise in profits from its recently launched website.

R & J Howarth has seen sales rise by £600 per month (1998), making the company a frontline example of how small business can profit from the web.

Many businesses have held back from trading on the Internet for two reasons. The cost of starting up a fully functional interactive website has been too prohibitive, with many web design consultancies charging tens of thousands for their services, and the issues surrounding data security have made both vendors and customers nervous.

R & J Howarth has taken advantage of a route developed specifically for small businesses to overcome these problems. It is using Actinic Catalog a low cost software package which creates a customer database on your desktop PC and works over an ordinary dial up Internet account.

"It is definitely been an economic route for us" says R & J Howarth’s managing director, Mike Howarth.

The company, founded by Mike’s father Roger over 40 years ago, employs 10 people and has two outlets in Bolton, one in the town centre and one in Little Lever, on its outskirts. Since going on the Internet customers are coming from further afield.

"We’re getting 1500 visitors (1998) to our site each month (thanks to specialist internet marketing by Lynn at Corporem) and more than a thousand of those are from abroad," says Mike. "I have been taking orders for Citizen watches from America and Australia because some models aren’t available in those countries."